Emma Rouault, the daughter of a country farmer, marries Charles Bovary, a dull provincial doctor. She has read too many romantic novels. The reality of marriage in a small Norman village is unbearable to her. Across the next three hundred pages she takes two lovers, ruins her family with debt, and finally swallows arsenic in her own kitchen.
Flaubert spent five years writing Madame Bovary, choosing each word as if it were the only word in the language. The book was put on trial for obscenity in 1857. He was acquitted. The novel established the rules of European realism for the next century: the indifferent narrator, the precise sentence, the refusal to forgive Emma for any of it.
Storica's adaptation preserves Flaubert's structure across twenty-five chapters at B2. The famous style indirect libre — the technique where the narrator slides into Emma's thoughts without quotation marks — is kept. So is the famous opening, the Vaubyessard ball, the carriage in Rouen, and the slow ruin of the final chapters.
Madame Bovary is the test case for B2 French. Flaubert is precise but not difficult — every sentence is built to be re-read once and understood. Imparfait and passé simple run side by side; you need both. The vocabulary is provincial bourgeois life: hats, debts, plowed fields, dinners. None of it is rare. What's rare is the precision. B2 is the level where you can finally see what Flaubert is doing.
Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.
Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Madame Bovary was originally written in French, but you choose your reading language when you start.
B2. Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.
About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.
No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.
Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.
Madame Bovary is rated B2, so we'd suggest starting with one of our A0 or A1 books first if you're brand-new to your target language. Check our shelf at /library/ — the readers there are short, gentle, and built specifically for week one.
Your first 30-day book is free. No card. No streak. Just a passage every morning.
Read it free for 7 days →A small group of readers working through classics in their target language — Kafka in German, Camus in French, Bovary in Spanish. Leave your email and we'll send your invitation.
Use this code in the app for 30% off your first year of Storica Pro.