Madame Bovary originally published as Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners is a novel by French writer Gustave Flaubert published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

Madame Bovary takes place in provincial Northern France near the town of Rouen in Normandy. Charles Bovary is a shy oddly dressed teenager arriving at a new school where his new classmates ridicule him. He struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes 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 Tôtes.

One day Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg and meets his patient's daughter Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful poetically dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent.