How long is Madame Bovary?

Madame Bovary is 360 pages, or approximately 121,659 words. At an average reading pace, it takes about 9 hours to read.

Is Madame Bovary difficult to read?

Madame Bovary has a difficulty score of 4.6 out of 10, making it moderately challenging. Key factors include vocabulary complexity (7.1/10), sentence structure (4.1/10), abstract concepts (1.7/10).

What genre is Madame Bovary?

Madame Bovary is categorized as Literary Fiction. It was published in 1857 by Gustave Flaubert.

When was Madame Bovary published?

Madame Bovary was published in 1857 by Gustave Flaubert.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Name: Madame Bovary
Author: Gustave Flaubert

Published 1857 · 360 pages · 121,659 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is Madame Bovary to read?

Madame Bovary scores 71 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 65 out of 100: Flaubert's vocabulary is precise rather than obscure. Medical terminology appears in clinical scenes; French provincial life contributes regional terms. The challenge lies in nuance rather than difficulty—every word is chosen to reveal character through seemingly neutral description.
Sentence structure: 65 out of 100: Flaubert's sentences are beautifully balanced but not convoluted. His mastery shows in rhythm and pacing rather than syntactic complexity. Free indirect discourse blends narrator and character, requiring attention to whose perspective governs each passage.
Abstraction: 68 out of 100: The novel remains grounded in concrete sensory detail—Emma's blue dress, the fat on Charles's lips, the taste of arsenic. Flaubert distrusted abstraction; his ideas emerge through accumulation of perfectly observed particulars.
Information density: 70 out of 100: Rich in social detail of Norman provincial life, requiring some knowledge of French history and Catholic ritual. The agricultural fair scene alone references local politics, animal husbandry, and romantic cliché simultaneously.
Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100: Flaubert's irony operates through understatement and juxtaposition. The famous agricultural fair scene intercuts Rodolphe's seduction with prize announcements for manure. Emma's romanticism is presented without explicit judgment, requiring readers to perceive the gap between her dreams and reality.
Symbolic density: 78 out of 100: Symbols emerge organically: the wedding bouquet, the blind beggar, the arsenic. Objects acquire meaning through repetition and context rather than imposed significance. The famous cab ride leaves everything to inference.
Ironic distance: 80 out of 100: Flaubert's irony pervades every page without ever becoming explicit. He famously said 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi' yet maintains devastating distance from Emma's delusions. The reader must work to distinguish sympathy from judgment.
Resolution withholding: 85 out of 100: The plot moves with tragic inevitability toward Emma's suicide and Charles's devastated discovery of her letters. Little is withheld; the ending is relentlessly complete, following consequences through to Berthe's factory work.
Structural complexity: 48 out of 100: Three parts, chronological narrative, conventional chapter divisions. The novel's innovation is stylistic rather than structural. The opening's unusual 'we' narrator disappears, an oddity critics still debate.

How Madame Bovary is regarded

Madame Bovary holds a literary regard score of 93 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.