In 1800s provincial northern France, Emma Bovary yearns for a taste of the luxury and romance she has imbibed from the popular novels she had read. Instead, married to a man with a second-rate medical degree and little ambition, and living far away from the enticements of Paris, Emma is stifled by the banality and emptiness of her existence. Desperately frustrated, she embarks upon adulterous affairs and voracious spending sprees. However, not only...

Offers a new translation of Flaubert's classic tale, in which the title character turns to spending and a series of affairs to combat the boredom of married life and, heartbroken and crippled by debts, takes drastic action that results in tragedy.