Madame Bovary (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Gustave Flaubert
- First Published: 1857
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: Mid-nineteenth century
- Setting: France
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: France or French people, Love or romance, Suicide, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Doctors, Dreams, Adultery, Greed, Amputation, amputees, or prosthetics, Ambition, Debtors or creditors
- Locales: Rouen, France
Characters Discussed
Emma Bovary (boh-vah-REE), a sentimental young woman whose foolishly romantic ideas on life and love cause her to become dissatisfied with her humdrum husband and the circumstances of her married life. Her feelings of disillusionment lead her first into two desperate, hopeless love affairs and then to an agonizing and ugly death from arsenic poisoning. Filled with fiery, indefinite conceptions of love, which she is capable of translating only into gaudy bourgeois displays of materialism, she is unable to reconcile herself to a life of tedium as the wife of...
[The entire page is 1326 words long]
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