THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Unhappily married to a dull-witted country doctor, Emma Bovary is desperate to escape from her stifling, lonely existence. At first she does so through fashion magazines and romantic novels but an autumn ball held at a nearby château reveals a vision of another glittering world. Possessed by feelings of envy at this glimpse of luxury, Emma allows herself to be drawn into a love affair with brutal libertine Rodolphe Boulanger.

'It is a delicious thing,' Flaubert once observed, 'to write, whether well or badly - to no longer be yourself, but to move in an entire universe of your own creating'. In Madame Bovary, he creates with the exquisite detail of a great genre painting, the world of everyday things - the dusty heat of a banqueting tent, the perfume of truffles or the whisper of a dress. When first published in 1856-7, the novel's scathing portrayal of French provincial life brought it immediate notoriety. Yet it is the profound humanity with which Flaubert presents Emma, her flaws and her follies, that gives his masterpiece its continuing appeal. We think and see through Emma's eyes and we feel her chill despair as she discovers, in adultery, all the banality of marriage.

'Madame Bovary is perhaps my most indispensable novel. We read of her inevitable downfall with dread and sympathy, because we recognise what could so easily happen to ourselves when our passionate natures are stifled by monotony. Emma's story is a tragedy of failed escape. She goes over the wall on our behalf, and we are left watching anxiously as the world cuts her down. Poor Emma, and poor Charles too; they are unmistakeably us.'

'The inside of a woman's heart, perfectly described by a man through exterior detail.'