Madame Bovary is the story of a young country doctor's wife who seeks escape from the boredom of her existence in love affairs and romantic yearnings, and who is doomed to disillusionment. By his evocation of Emma, a figure both absurd and pathetic, and of the petty provincialism that surrounds her, Flaubert established the realistic novel in France; but his concern was with more than mere description. His preoccupation with style and with the aesthetic transformation of a mundane and vulgar reality is what gives the novel its lasting fascination and its place as a landmark in world literature.