Madame Bovary is the story of a woman caught between two worlds--one of the dull and stultifying country life that she leads with her husband, and the world of high romance and love: a fantasy.Written with a detached irony and beautiful wit, and playing on the audience’s affection for its central character as well as showing up her desires and hopes to be fantastical, Gustave Flaubert’s great work has gone down in the history of European literature. Full of hope and full of despair, the story of Emma Bovary’s life is one that shocked the readers of its own day (resulting in a notorious literary trial) as well as resonating deeply with readers down to the present day.