Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert’s novel of Emma Bovary, a Norman farmer’s daughter brought up on romantic novels, who marries a dull country doctor, Charles Bovary, and looks for the passion her provincial life denies her in love affairs, finery and debt.

Start reading36 chapters, about 117,000 words

Famous quotes

• Charles’s conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone’s ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought.

  Part I, Chapter SevenIn context

  • Clever Jabs
  • Talking

• She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris.

  Part I, Chapter NineIn context

  • Life & Death

• A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered.

  Part II, Chapter ThreeIn context

  • Freedom
  • Men
  • Women

• Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

  Part II, Chapter TwelveIn context

  • Music
  • Talking

• But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.

  Part II, Chapter FifteenIn context

  • Happiness

Contents

1. Dedication

Part I

1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine

Part II

1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen

Part III

1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven