Madame Bovary tells the story of Emma, the wife of a provincial health officer, who tries to live the love she knew from books, betrays her husband with two lovers, sinks into debt, and kills herself with arsenic; in the end the husband dies ruined, the daughter goes to work in a spinning mill, and the pharmacist Homais receives the Legion of Honor.
Part I takes place in Tostes: Charles, married to an older widow, meets Emma when he sets the broken leg of her father, and, widowed, marries her; at a ball at the palace of Vaubyessard, Emma waltzes with a viscount and sees a luxury she will not forget. Boredom makes her ill, and they move. In Part II, in Yonville, Emma falls silently in love with the clerk Léon, who leaves for Paris, and then gives herself to Rodolphe, who courts her at the agricultural show. Charles fails in the operation on Hippolyte's club foot, and the leg ends up amputated. Rodolphe gives up the escape set for 4 September and breaks off by letter; Emma falls ill, Charles spends forty-three days without leaving her side and, at the end of Part II, she meets Léon again at an opera in Rouen.
In Part III, after an afternoon in a cab with its blinds drawn, shown only from outside, Léon and Emma become lovers. She invents piano lessons to see him every Thursday and signs bills for the merchant Lheureux. Faced with the summons for eight thousand francs within twenty-four hours, she asks Léon, the notary Guillaumin, and Rodolphe for money, in vain, and eats arsenic in Homais's pharmacy.
After the funeral, Charles discovers the lovers' letters, meets Rodolphe, says he bears him no ill will, and dies the next day. Berthe ends up with a poor aunt, and Homais, who drove three doctors out of the village, is decorated.