Social Class Distinction In Madame Bovary: A Way Of Categorizing People. Striving for higher social status has been the downfall of many, many people just as it was the destruction of Emma Bovary. In Nineteenth Century France, several class existed: peasant or working class, middle class, upper-middle class, bourgeois, gentry and aristocratic. In the story, Madame Bovary, we see a number of individuals striving to move themselves “ up” to the bourgeois, a status that is higher than the working class but not as high as nobility. The bourgeois are charact