Madame Bovary

Emma's world is the invented village of Yonville-l'Abbaye, drawn from the real Ry east of Rouen, and Tostes (now Tôtes) to the north, where Charles first practises. Her escapes are to a real Rouen: the cathedral, and the closed cab that scandalised France, circling the city with its blinds down. That drive can be walked.

Charles Bovary

Tostes (Tôtes)

Part One, Tostes · 3% through the novel

Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was installed, opposite his place, as his successor.

Charles takes over the dead doctor's practice at Tostes and brings Emma here after their wedding. Her boredom in this small Norman town, and the ball at Vaubyessard that shows her a grander life, is what drives the couple to leave for Yonville.

inspired by "Tostes" is Flaubert's older spelling of the real village of Tôtes, on the high road between Rouen and Dieppe, where he settles Charles's first medical practice. The commune still exists under the modern spelling.

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