Underlying book story — recording-specific coverage unverified
Coverage is limited to the scope described in this write-up. Recording changes, further installments or an unwritten ending may remain outside it.
This synopsis covers the underlying book linked to this recording: Madame Bovary. Recording-specific abridgements, added material or adaptation changes have not been verified.
Charles Bovary is a shy, oddly dressed teenager who does poorly in medical school, and becomes not a physician, but rather an Officier de santé in the Public Health Service. He marries the woman his mother has chosen for him, the unpleasant but supposedly rich widow Héloïse Dubuc. He sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes in the Seine-Inférieure department of the Normandy region.
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the broken leg of its owner, Théodore Rouault, and meets his daughter, Emma, a beautiful, convent-educated, poetically-dressed young woman who has a yearning for luxury and romance inspired by reading popular novels. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and when Héloïse dies, Charles waits a decent interval before courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles marry.
After a fancy ball where she dances with a Vicomte, Emma finds her married life dull and becomes listless. Charles decides that she needs a change of scenery and moves his practice to the larger market town of Yonville-l'Abbaye, where Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, but motherhood proves a disappointment to Emma. She becomes infatuated with Léon Dupuis, a law student who shares Emma's appreciation of literature and music. Emma does not fully act upon her passion for Léon, who departs for Paris to continue his studies. Emma ambitiously hopes Charles will gain a higher local reputation when he tries an innovative operation to cure a local inn-servant, Hippolyte, of his clubfoot, but the procedure goes disastrously and Hippolyte's leg must be amputated. Emma holds Charles in utter contempt.
Next, Emma begins an affair with a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger. After four years, she insists they run away together. Rodolphe does not share her enthusiasm for this plan, and on the eve of their planned departure, he ends the relationship with a letter placed at the bottom of a basket of apricots delivered to Emma. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill and briefly returns to religion.
When Emma recovers, she and Charles attend the opera, at Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. Emma indulges her fancy for luxury goods and clothes with purchases made on credit from the merchant Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles' estate.
When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, only to be turned down, even by Rodolphe. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, stops working, and lives by selling off his possessions. When he dies, his young daughter Berthe is placed with her grandmother, who soon dies. Berthe lives with an impoverished aunt, who sends her to work in a cotton mill.
The book concludes with Yonville's local pharmacist Homais, a corrupt social climber who had competed with Charles' medical practice, gaining prominence and being rewarded for his supposed medical achievements: The last line of the novel reveals that he was awarded the Legion of Honour.
Charles Bovary is a shy, oddly dressed teenager who does poorly in medical school, and becomes not a physician, but rather an Officier de santé in the Public Health Service. He marries the woman his mother has chosen for him, the unpleasant but supposedly rich widow Héloïse Dubuc. He sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes in the Seine-Inférieure department of the Normandy region.
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the broken leg of its owner, Théodore Rouault, and meets his daughter, Emma, a beautiful, convent-educated, poetically-dressed young woman who has a yearning for luxury and romance inspired by reading popular novels. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and when Héloïse dies, Charles waits a decent interval before courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles marry.
After a fancy ball where she dances with a Vicomte, Emma finds her married life dull and becomes listless. Charles decides that she needs a change of scenery and moves his practice to the larger market town of Yonville-l'Abbaye, where Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, but motherhood proves a disappointment to Emma. She becomes infatuated with Léon Dupuis, a law student who shares Emma's appreciation of literature and music. Emma does not fully act upon her passion for Léon, who departs for Paris to continue his studies. Emma ambitiously hopes Charles will gain a higher local reputation when he tries an innovative operation to cure a local inn-servant, Hippolyte, of his clubfoot, but the procedure goes disastrously and Hippolyte's leg must be amputated. Emma holds Charles in utter contempt.
Next, Emma begins an affair with a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger. After four years, she insists they run away together. Rodolphe does not share her enthusiasm for this plan, and on the eve of their planned departure, he ends the relationship with a letter placed at the bottom of a basket of apricots delivered to Emma. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill and briefly returns to religion.
When Emma recovers, she and Charles attend the opera, at Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. Emma indulges her fancy for luxury goods and clothes with purchases made on credit from the merchant Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles' estate.
When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, only to be turned down, even by Rodolphe. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, stops working, and lives by selling off his possessions. When he dies, his young daughter Berthe is placed with her grandmother, who soon dies. Berthe lives with an impoverished aunt, who sends her to work in a cotton mill.
The book concludes with Yonville's local pharmacist Homais, a corrupt social climber who had competed with Charles' medical practice, gaining prominence and being rewarded for his supposed medical achievements: The last line of the novel reveals that he was awarded the Legion of Honour.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Underlying book identified by the catalog’s explicit book_slug relation. Exact source annotation 1015. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Madame Bovary. Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license