The Timeless Truth of Madame Bovary Written in 1857, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert has become a literary classic. Emma Bovary is a middle-class country girl with a taste for rich things; she marries a doctor and has a daughter. Her husband, Charles, adores her and thinks she can do no wrong. He overlooks the sign of his adultery, telling himself that his unhappiness is caused by his poor health, and forgives his excessive spending. Madame Bovary's excessive desires seem to stem from her excessive reading of novels in which life seemed perfect to her. She "tried to discover what exactly the words happiness, passion, ecstasy, which had seemed so beautiful to her in books, meant in life" (45). Through Emma, ​​Flaubert illustrates that not being satisfied with what we are given in life leads to pain. Soon after marrying Charles, Emma finds that she is unhappy with her new life, due to the lack of romance in Charles. Emma thinks to herself at the beginning of the marriage: "Shouldn't a man... know everything, excel in many activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, into the refinements of life, into all the mysteries? But this [Charles] did not teach nothing, she knew nothing, she wanted nothing. He thought she was happy [Emma] and she resented this calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him" (54). Her need for Charles to be more romantic and her ignorance of his feelings lead her to despise him. After a few years of marriage, Emma became so bored with her life that she became sick with longing. Her boredom is so great that she wishes she could talk to her servant, "but a sense of shame holds her back" (81). She considered herself above everyone else, therefore isolated... middle of paper... but Emma comes to understand that the best thing in life is family and the happiness it can offer. The selfishness that had governed her life is now nothing, all the things that previously mattered to her are no longer nothing. The things she had bought and the lovers she had been with are not with her now. Now with her there are only Charles and his little girl, the ones she had tried to escape from. The simple truth depicted in Madame Bovary still belongs to the present, selfishness will lead her to a life of discontent. Flaubert's illustration of the unhappiness that thinking only of oneself can bring to others can still be seen in the world today. This is why Madame Bovary has remained a novel full of timeless truths over the years. Works Cited Flaubert, Gustave. Mrs Bovery. Translated by Marx-Aveling, Eleanor. Grolier Incorporated, New York. ND.