The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was notoriously a perfectionist about his writing and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word").
The novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized, resulting in a trial that made the story notorious. After the acquittal, it became a bestseller when it was published as a book, and now stands virtually unchallenged not only as a seminal work of Realism, but as one of the most influential novels of all time.