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So says Gustav Flaubert of his novel's protagonist, of himself.  Vladimir Nabokov argues that "Flaubert's bourgeois is a state of mind, not a state of pocket."  Where do you see this in the novel?   In Flaubert? 

Well, the novel concerns the effect of romance--the dime novel of the day--on Madame Bovary. She dreams and she dreams of the fulfillment that her marriage does not offer; she buys into the dream of the fairy tale that is constructed by popular fiction / culture.  Flaubert admits that he is Madame Bovary not by virtue of her economic status but by virtue of her bourgeois sentimentality, that he too can be and has been seduced by popular fiction--the world that it has engendered.  He is the flaneur, after all, always on the street to see and be seen; he is the quintessential product of the new city life, and another product of that nascent modernism if popular culture / fiction.  These are some reasons he claims a shared identity with his heroine.