Review of Madame Bovary and its symbolism

Madame Bovary is considered Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece and the most influential French novel of the nineteenth century. Often described as a satire on romantic beliefs and the rural bourgeois, Madame Bovary relates the story of Emma Bovary, a bored housewife whose dreams of romantic love (primarily gathered from popular romanticized novels) are unfulfilled through her marriage to a simple country doctor. She attempts to realize her fantasies through love affairs with a local landowner and a law clerk, and later through extravagant purchases. Unable to pay her debts and unwilling to bea…