Elsewhere Spring Syllabus Module 3 (Madame Bovary)

Join us for the third and final meeting of the Elsewhere Spring Syllabus Book Club, our slow-burn reading journey for readers who love books, good company, and a little literary mischief.

For this module, we’ll read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Continuing the threads we’ve followed throughout the syllabus, we’ll return once again to questions of Class Performativity & Outsider Status alongside Obsession vs. Identity Dissolution, this time through the lens of desire, fantasy, consumption, and the quiet violence of social expectation.

Moving from the emotional wildness of Catherine Earnshaw and the interior longings of Natsuko, Makiko, and Midoriko, we arrive at Emma Bovary: a woman shaped as much by novels, class aspiration, and romantic fantasy as by the world around her. Together, we’ll explore what happens when identity becomes inseparable from performance, longing, and the pursuit of a life that always seems just out of reach.

Come for the books. Stay…