Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert''s first published novel and considered his masterpiece. 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. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel''s true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was notoriously a perfectionist about his writing and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word").