Gustave Flaubert · 1857 · exile

Flaubert's 1857 novel, prosecuted for obscenity on publication. Emma Rouault marries a dull country doctor, reads too many romances, and spends the rest of her life trying to get the life she read about out of two Norman market towns and a provincial city - which is a distance of about thirty miles, and might as well be the moon.

1. 1
   Tostes

   Charles Bovary's first practice, where Emma arrives as a bride and discovers within a month that she has married a man who eats loudly, has no conversation and is perfectly content - and that this is now her life.

2. 2
   La Vaubyessard

   One invitation to a marquis's ball: waltzing until three, a man who says the word Italy, and a satin slipper stained yellow from the floor - which she keeps, and which ruins her, because now she has a comparison.

3. 3
   Yonville-l'Abbaye

   The move that was meant to help. A chemist who talks constantly, a clerk called Leon who reads poetry, and Rodolphe, a landowner who seduces her at the agricultural show while the prize for manure is announced in the background.

4. 4
   Rouen

   The city, reached by the Hirondelle every Thursday on the pretext of piano lessons - the cathedral, the closed cab going round and round the streets for hours, and the debts mounting behind all of it until the bailiffs come.