You all know the feeling of being trapped inside your own life. Well, take that to an extreme, and you’ve got Madame Bovary. The novel’s protagonist feels stuck inside an unhappy marriage, a restrictive society, and a monotonous everyday routine, and she’s willing do to almost anything to escape. She dreams of fleeing her old life and finding a new one that’s more exciting and full of exotic possibility. However, every time she tries to change her life, it cycles back somehow into the same old, same old. Can she ever escape? Is escape even possible? The novel isn’t very optimistic on that front.