Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ('the precise word'). Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Madame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut novel.
1856 (in serial) & April 1857 (in book form)
