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Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

Paris, 1856

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Literary Classic

Novel
Realism

What It’s About

Bourgeois Boredom and Lustful Liaisons

In 1856, the relatively unknown French author Gustave Flaubert caused outrage with what was to become one of the most influential novels of literary history. Madame Bovary is the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor’s wife whose passions and romantic notions drive her to start an affair, accumulate debts, entangle herself in lies and, in the end, commit suicide. What upset the public most about Flaubert’s novel was that at no point did he take sides or condemn his protagonist’s actions. With Madame Bovary, Flaubert created one of the first truly modern novels and pre-empted some of the innovative narrative forms of the 20th century. He did this by taking the role of an omniscient and impersonal narrator, who describes the romantic inner life of the main character, and contrasting it with the hopeless and rather dismal reality of her life. The novel is a social study and the beginning of the age of Realism in literary history.

Summary

Charles Becomes a Doctor

As a 15-year-old young man, Charles Bovary moves with his parents to Rouen in Normandy, France. His mother, Madame Bovary senior, has greats plans for him to become a doctor. Charles, however, is an average student; it is only on his second attempt that he passes his exams. His mother must then pull strings to get him a practice in the small village of Tostes. She also finds him a wife: the wealthy but ugly Héloïse Dubuc. Life with Héloïse soon becomes unbearable for Charles. She is extremely jealous and desperate for reassurance and eventually starts spying on Charles and opening his mail.

Meeting Emma

One night, a messenger comes to call Charles to the house of a Monsieur Rouault, who has broken his leg. There, Charles meets Rouault’s daughter, the young and pretty Emma Rouault. She fascinates him with her beauty, elegance and artlessness, and his visits to the Rouaults’s home turn out to be a lot more frequent than Monsieur Rouault’s injuries require. Héloïse becomes suspicious and demands answers from ...

About the Author

French novelist Gustave Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821 in Rouen, Normandy. His father was chief surgeon and clinical professor at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Rouen. His mother, a doctor’s daughter from Pont l’Évêque, belonged to a family of distinguished magistrates. Flaubert started writing as a teenager, and he returned in later years to several of the subjects with which he experimented during this time. In 1841, he went on to study law in Paris but had to abandon his studies because of a nervous condition. He moved to his estate at Croisset near Rouen, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. There, he dedicated his time to writing, which he approached with almost religious asceticism. During a visit to Paris in 1846, he met the poet Louise Colet, who became his mistress. Between 1849 and 1851, Flaubert traveled widely with Du Camp, visiting Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Syria and Italy. In 1857, the publication of Madame Bovary finally brought the literary success he had been waiting for – though with some less desirable side effects, as he was taken to court on charges of the novel’s alleged immorality. A trip to Tunisia toward the end of the 1850s inspired his next novel, Salammbô (1863). However, neither this nor the two ensuing novels L’Education sentimentale (1870) and La Tentation de Saint Antoine (1874) replicated the success that Madame Bovary brought. Only the 1877 collection of short stories titled Trois Contes received critical acclaim. Flaubert died suddenly on May 8, 1880 in Croisset of an apoplectic stroke. He left an unfinished page and notes for the second volume of his latest novel, Bouvard et Pécuchet, which was published after his death.