When Emma Rouault marries Charles Bovary she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women s magazines. But Charles is a dull country doctor and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to realize her dreams she takes a lover and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair. Flaubert s novel scandalized its readers when it was first published in 1857 and it remains unsurpassed in its unveiling of character and society.