Madame Bovary: Analysis of Setting.

*Rouen (rew-AN). City in Normandy where Emma Bovary is educated in a convent school. The home of Gustave Flaubert in his youth, Rouen represents Emma’s first moment of happiness—one that she later regrets. After her first lover abandons her, she returns to Rouen to attend an opera that she hopes will distract her and be a source of healing. This visit to Rouen serves as a transition between the second and third parts of the novel. At the opera Emma again meets the young Léon Dupuis, whom she met in Tostes. The affair they conduct in Rouen effectively replaces the spectacle they have both come to see. However, Rouen proves to be no different for Emma than Tostes, as Léon, too, abandons her.