Madame Bovary
The events in the order the book tells them.
Part I
- Chapter 11
Charles's Cap
At school, the new boy, Charles Bovary, arrives in a shabby cap and, when told to speak louder, shouts his name so loudly that the class hears Charbovari. The class erupts in jeers, repeating Charbovari, and the teacher makes him copy the verb ridiculus sum twenty times.
- Chapter 22
A Broken Leg at Bertaux
A health officer in Tostes and married to an older widow, Charles is called at night to the Bertaux farm to set the leg of Father Rouault. There he meets the farmer's daughter, Emma.
- Chapter 43
The Wedding Under the Cart Shed
Charles, a widower, asks Father Rouault for Emma's hand, and the wedding takes place the following spring. The feast is served under the cart shed, with a confectioner's dessert topped by a Cupid on a chocolate swing.
- Chapter 54
The Dead Bride's Bouquet
At the Tostes house, Emma sees in the bedroom the orange-blossom bouquet of Charles's first wife. He takes it to the attic, and she wonders what would be done with her own bouquet if she were to die.
- Chapter 65
Novels at the Convent
The novel goes back to Emma's past: she entered the convent at thirteen. She loved the church for its flowers and its languor, and read in secret, in the dormitory, the love novels that an old seamstress from the linen room lent to the older pupils.
- Chapter 86
The Ball at La Vaubyessard
At the castle of Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma tastes iced champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple, and dances the waltz with a Viscount. On the way back, Charles finds a green silk cigar case on the road, which she keeps in the cupboard.
- Chapter 97
The Move to Yonville
After the ball, Emma buys a map of Paris, abandons the piano, and falls ill with nerves. Charles decides on a change of air and, while tidying a drawer before the departure, Emma burns her own wedding bouquet. When they leave for Yonville, in March, she is pregnant.
Part II
- Chapter 28
The Arrival at Yonville
At the Golden Lion inn, the Bovarys dine with the pharmacist Homais and with Léon, the notary's clerk. Emma and Léon discover the same tastes, while Homais tells Charles who's who in the village.
- Chapter 39
Berthe Is Born
Emma wanted a boy, who would be named Georges, and faints when Charles tells her that a girl, Berthe, has been born. The child is given to a wet nurse, who lives at the far end of the village.
- Chapter 510
Léon's Silent Love
On a winter walk, Emma compares Charles's back to Léon's face and realizes she loves him. In the following days she becomes an exemplary wife and mother, and Léon, without an answer, leaves her visits in despair.
- Chapter 611
The Priest Who Does Not Understand
Stifled, Emma seeks out Abbé Bournisien and tries to say that she suffers, but he talks of the catechism and of a sick cow, and attributes her unease to digestion. Shortly afterwards Léon leaves for Paris.
- Chapter 812
The Agricultural Show
On the day of the show, while a councillor speaks and the cattle prizes are handed out, Rodolphe Boulanger courts Emma in the upper room of the town hall and takes her hand.
- Chapter 913
I Have a Lover
Rodolphe returns after six weeks and declares himself. Emma yields to him on a horseback ride, which Rodolphe suggests as a remedy for her oppressions and Charles enthusiastically approves, and afterwards, alone before the mirror, she repeats: I have a lover.
- Chapter 1114
Hippolyte's Club Foot
Persuaded by Homais and by Emma, Charles operates on the club foot of the stable boy Hippolyte. The leg gangrenes and is amputated, and Emma begins to look at her husband with contempt.
- Chapter 1215
The Flight That Never Was
Emma asks Rodolphe to run away with her, and he agrees: the departure is set for Monday, September 4. Two days before, walking back across the prairie, Rodolphe decides he will not leave.
- Chapter 1316
The Letter in the Apricots
Rodolphe sends the letter of rupture hidden in a basket of apricots. Emma reads it, falls ill with a cerebral fever, and for forty-three days Charles does not leave her side.
- Chapter 1417
Wanting to Be a Saint
Convalescent, Emma asks for communion and decides to be a saint, but finds no satisfaction. Charles accepts from Lheureux what she had ordered for the flight and signs bills totaling one thousand two hundred and fifty francs.
- Chapter 1518
The Opera in Rouen
At the opera Lucia di Lammermoor in Rouen, Emma recognizes herself in the heroine and imagines a love with the tenor Lagardy. At the interval, Charles brings Léon, now a clerk in Rouen, to the box.
Part III
- Chapter 119
The Cathedral and the Cab
Léon declares himself to Emma, and she agrees to meet him at the cathedral. From there the two tour Rouen in a cab with lowered blinds, and the novel tells only what the passersby see from outside.
- Chapter 320
Three Days in Rouen
Emma and Léon spend three days with the shutters closed at the Hotel de Boulogne, and dine by boat on an island. On the way back, the boatman talks of a certain Adolphe, or Dodolphe, and Emma shivers.
- Chapter 521
Thursdays in Rouen
With the pretext of piano lessons, Emma goes to Rouen every Thursday to see Léon. Charles finds out that the piano teacher does not know her, but a piano-lesson receipt turns up in his boot, and her life becomes a web of lies.
- Chapter 622
The Summons
After the masked ball of Mi-Carême night, Emma returns to Yonville the next day and finds a summons to pay eight thousand francs within twenty-four hours. Lheureux, whom she seeks out, denies any extension.
- Chapter 723
The Inventory and the Sale
The bailiff Hareng inventories the goods, and a poster announces the sale of the furniture. Emma asks everyone for money: Léon cannot raise it, the notary Guillaumin makes advances to her, and the tax collector Binet backs away.
- Chapter 824
Rodolphe's Refusal
At the castle of La Huchette, Emma asks Rodolphe for three thousand francs, and he calmly says he does not have them. She accuses him, looking at the expensive things in his room, and leaves.
- Chapter 825
The Death of Emma
At Homais's pharmacy, Justin gives her the key to the laboratory, and Emma eats the arsenic from the blue flask. Abbé Bournisien gives her extreme unction, and on hearing the blind man singing in the street she laughs and dies.
- Chapter 926
Three Coffins
Charles writes that he wants Emma buried in her wedding dress, in three coffins, of oak, mahogany, and lead. On the wake nights, Homais and the abbé argue about religion without listening to each other and fall asleep beside the body.
- Chapter 1127
Charles's Death
In debt, Charles finds Rodolphe's letter of rupture in the attic and sells the silver and the drawing-room furniture. He finds Léon's letters in Emma's writing desk, tells Rodolphe at a meeting in the market that he bears him no ill will, and dies in the arbor holding a lock of Emma's hair. Berthe ends up in a spinning mill.
- Chapter 1128
The Legion of Honor
Homais wins the blind man over with a newspaper campaign, drives three doctors out of Yonville, and receives the cross of the Legion of Honor: it is with this news that the novel ends.