Set amid the stifling atmosphere of nineteenth-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovaryis at once an unsparing depiction of a woman's gradual corruption and a savagely ironic study of human shallowness and stupidity. Neither Emma, nor her lovers, nor Homais, the "man of science, "escapes the author's searing castigation; and it is the book's final profound irony that only Charles, Emma's oxlike, eternally deceived husband, emerges with a measure of human grace through his stubborn and selfless love. With its rare formal perfection, Madame Bovaryrepresents, as Frank O'Connor has declared, "possibly the most beautifully written book ever composed; undoubtedly the most beautifully written novel . . . a book that invites superlatives . . . the most important novel of the century. "