Daughter of a small landowner, Emma grows up in a monastery where, amidst rampant emotionalism and superstition, she creates a completely false image of her future life, filled with luxury, passion, and Byronic lovers.

Her entry into the world is a rough landing in reality, made even more painful by her marriage to the country doctor Bovary and by the suffocation of the provincial surroundings.

In vain, Emma will seek an escape in the arms of lovers. Betrayed by those she loved and drowning in debt, she will commit suicide with arsenic, securing the only definitive escape that is accessible to her.