The piece of literature that comes to mind when I think of boredom is Madame Bovary. It’s a novel about a married woman who craves to escape her boring and empty life. The novel painstakingly explores boredom into its depth. There are pages and pages of Emma Bovary being bored.

The novel is seen as a masterpiece amongst literary circle, I am yet to experience its mastery. I was very excited to put the book down after reading it because I knew that I never had to read it again. I must admit that Flaubert does capture boredom to perfection as he evokes the feeling so accurately unto the reader themselves. Below is an extract demonstrating this:

“I’ve read everything,” she said to herself.

So she sat there idly, holding the tongs in the fire until they turned red, or watching the rain fall.

How sad she felt on Sundays, when the church bell sounded for vespers!  She stood in a kind of expectant daze, listening as each broken note rang out again, and again.  A cat was stalking about the rooftops,  arching its back in the last pale rays of sunshine. The wind blew trails of dust along the highroad. In the distance, a dog howled now and then, and the bell kept up its tolling, each monotonous note dying out over the countryside.

Thank you for reading.