- Charles Bovary marries a beautiful farm girl, Emma, who is filled with desire for luxury and romance which she gets from reading popular novels (like Jane Austen's Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey)
- The Bovarys move to Yonville where Emma flirts with a young law student Leon. When he leaves to study in Paris, Emma begins an affair with a rich landowner, Rodolphe. She plans to run away with him but Rodolphe breaks off the plan the evening before.
- Emma and Charles attend the opera in Rouen one night and Emma reencounters Leon. They begin an affair while Charles believes she is taking piano lessons.
- Emma spends exorbitant amounts of money at the dressmaker's and her debts pile up. People suspect her of adultery and she commits suicide by swallowing arsenic.
- Charles is distraught and even more so after finding the letters Rodolphe wrote her. He dies and leaves their daughter an orphan.
The Sentimental Education
- describes Frederic Moreau's life during the revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second French Empire, and his love for an older woman
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