"Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert Quiz

Answer: Emma

Emma is introduced as Mademoiselle Emma Rouault in part 1, chapter 2.

Answer: Charles

Charles is introduced in part 1, chapter 1. The entire first chapter focuses on his childhood, upbringing, and education.

Answer: Doctor

Charles' life was essentially molded by his domineering mother, as described in part 1, chapter 1: "She shifted onto this childish head all of her scattered and broken vanities."

Answer: Tostes

In part 1, chapter 4, Charles takes Emma to live in Tostes, where he has an established practice. At the end of part 1, chapter 9, the couple moves to Yonville, where they remain for the rest of the novel.

Answer: Homais

Homais is a bold, brash man who, much to the consternation of his neighbors and the village priest, has created his own deity and his own religion (part 2, chapter 1).

Answer: Rodolphe

Rodolphe, a bachelor, first visits Doctor Bovary to have himself bled because he "feels pins and needles everywhere." When he sees Emma, he decides that he must have her because "those eyes of hers, they go right into your heart." They begin their two-year affair in part 2, chapter 9. Of the relationship, Emma thinks that "at last she was to know the pleasures of love, that fever of happiness which she had despaired of ... everything would be passion, ecstasy, delirium."

Answer: A law student

In part 3, chapter 1, just before Emma and Leon begin their affair, Leon is a law student. When Leon lived in Yonville near the beginning of the novel, he was a clerk in a lawyer's office.

Answer: She is taking piano lessons.

Emma concocts this excuse in part 3, chapter 5. However, just a few pages farther, Charles runs into Madame Lempereur, the woman who is supposed to be giving piano lessons to Emma, and Madame Lempereur states that she has never heard of Madame Bovary. Emma must then concoct another lie to keep deceiving her husband.

Answer: She poisons herself with arsenic.

In despair because of her deep debts and lost lovers, Emma pressures Justin to open Homais' apothecary shop so that she can get some arsenic to kill rats. When she enters the shop, she immediately consumes a fistful of the poisonous white powder. After downing the arsenic, Emma thinks, "Oh, death is really nothing very much! I'm going to fall asleep, and it'll be all over!" How wrong she is (part 3, chapter 8).

Answer: She is sent to work in a cotton mill.

Charles and his mother both die at the end of the novel. Because Emma's father, Rouault, is paralyzed, he cannot care for Berthe, so a poor aunt takes her in. Penniless, Berthe is sent to work in a cotton mill.