One day Charles and Emma travel to Rouen to attend a play. They run into Léon, who has returned from Paris, and Emma and Léon finally strike up an affair. By pretending to take piano lessons, Emma manages to come to town once a week to see him. As with Rodolphe, the affair is joyful at first but eventually becomes repetitive and boring, and both lovers grow dissatisfied with one another. Oy, the tedium, the drudgery of trying to read this book! I tried to get into this story. Really, I did. It's a classic, right? And everyone else likes it. I kept making myself continue, hoping I could get into the story and figure out what's supposed to be so good about it. You might be surprised to learn that I was mesmerized by Emma’s life story. I was mesmerized and suffered along with her as she capsized further and further into the ambushes life presented her. Yes, I felt like I was in a trance and could not escape. Oh, Emma, dear Emma, why do people hate you so? Why did you make them feel that way? I am sorry for being so blunt. You, and your seemingly shallow priorities, gave your critics plenty of ammunition. You did the unthinkable. What excuse did you have for such a selfish, impulsive and futile behavior? Did you by any chance hear Virginia Woolf say 'You cannot find peace by avoiding life.'? What did you have to dive head first before she even professed this truth? But you might have overdid it, don’t you agree with me?

Madame Bovary: Key Facts | SparkNotes Madame Bovary: Key Facts | SparkNotes

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was born in Rouen, France, the younger son of a provincial doctor. At age eighteen he was sent to study law in Paris but was afflicted with a mysterious nervous ailment and retired after only three years to live with his widowed mother. Supported by a private income, he devoted himself to his writing. The success of Madame Bovary, his first novel, was ensured when it was deemed immoral by the French government. Flaubert went on to write Salammbô, Sentimental Education, and Three Tales, and his fame and reputation grew steadily after his death with the publication of his unfinished comic masterpiece Bouvard and Pécuchet and the many remarkable volumes of his correspondence.Fleming, Mike Jr. (September 9, 2014). "Toronto Update: Re-Branding Millennium Seals Deal For 'Madame Bovary' ".

Book Summary - CliffsNotes

Abraham's Valley in 1993, directed by Manoel de Oliveira, is a close adaptation set in Portugal, in which Flaubert's novel is mentioned and discussed several times. Madame Bovary (2014), directed by Sophie Barthes and starring Mia Wasikowska, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Paul Giamatti, and Ezra Miller

In 1885, London publisher Henry Vizetelly hired Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor Marx, to produce the first major English translation of Madame Bovary. It was published the following year [ PDF]. She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. 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. Flaubert handles his prose deftly, precisely, and with a deceptively commonplace hand. He doesn’t try for smart metaphors and delicate similes, but rather has characters say what the mean in an effectively believable way that makes Emma a character who can impact the lives of real women. Parts of this novel are spine-tinglingly sordid, others wrench out your gut, most of it can be drearily, boringly, mind-numbingly quotidian, and every so often, a gem shines through that makes you turn around and look at someone you had thought you were done being interested in. In other words, it’s like last Wednesday. And the Tuesday before that. And today. And probably next Monday. The morning when you woke up vowing that today it was all going to be different, that afternoon when you just wanted to die, the evening when you forgot it all making dinner and laughing about that thing you saw on the internet.