Flaubert’s story of the quest for fulfillment in love is an enduring classic. By marrying a local doctor, Emma Bovary feels that she will escape her provincial upbringing. But it is not long before she feels constrained and frustrated by married life, ignoring her devoted husband and daughter and immersing herself in romantic thoughts which lead, inevitably, to affairs.  First, she focuses her attention on a law student in town, and later she takes a lover. When the lover refuses to run away with her, she takes up again with the law clerk. Her spending on dresses and furnishings mounts; these debts coupled with her ill-advised professional counsel to her husband bring about his ruin.