When she and Charles attend a dazzling ball, Emma’s longings are sharpened and intensified. Though he is kind, loving, and moderately successful in his profession, she feels that he is not an adequate husband, and spends her days dreaming of a better life – an elegant, refined, exciting life. She does not feel anything like the love described in her favorite romance novels, and she blames Charles’s bad looks and dull conversation. Charles adores his new wife, but Emma is soon bored and disappointed. Not long after, Charles’s wife dies of a nervous ailment, and within a year Charles and Emma are married. During his visit, Charles is enchanted by the man’s daughter, a beautiful, elegant girl named Emma. One night, he receives a call to set a man’s broken leg. His solicitous mother finds him a wealthy middle-aged wife named Madame Dubuc, and the couple move to a small town called Tostes, where Charles begins to practice medicine. After struggling though primary school and a series of courses in medicine that he finds inscrutable, Charles passes his exams and becomes a doctor. The novel begins by introducing us to a teenaged Charles, awkward, mild, dull, and studious.

Instaling Madame Bovary