Background to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

Read pp. 852-858 of Literature: World Masterpieces for some background to 19th C. Europe.

In pairs, take notes on the artistic movements Romanticism (pp. 857-58 ) and Realism (p. 858).

Gustave Flaubert Biography

· 1821 Flaubert born in Rouen: father surgeon, mother was doctor's daughter;

· 1836 passion for Elisa Schlésinger, a married woman eleven years his elder;

· 1840-41, studied law in Paris against his will, failed exams;

· 1843 likely suffered a nervous breakdown -- gave up law and returned home;

· 1846 death of his father from gangrene; sister Caroline died shortly after childbirth;

Flaubert retired to Croisset, near Rouen on the Seine, with his mother and infant niece;

· 1847 walking tour of the Loire and Brittany's coast

· 1849-51 travels with Maxime du Camp through the middle east, Egypt, Greece, Italy

· 1851 began work on Madame Bovary

· 1857 Madame Bovary published after five years’ work

· Flaubert’s philosophical influences: pessimism, nihilism, the unknown; science and religion as two poles of thought

· hate of the bourgeois, middle class ideology and way of life (despite very much being bourgeois himself); decried bourgeois institutions like marriage (viewed his sister’s husband as “mediocrity incarnate”)

· pursuit of perfection: "le seul mot juste" (took five years to write Madame Bovary)

· attempt to create a beauty beyond conventional morality and social realities

· combination of Romantic ideals (though very critical of them as well) and attempt at objectivity, scientific detachment

· Realism: focus on small, very life-like details of ordinary lives

· Rise of industrialism in Europe: communications revolution through rail, telegraph; new printing techniques (newspapers became commonplace for all classes to read)

Madame Bovary (1857)

· antiromantic novel with underlying Romantic impulses

· portrayal of bourgeois life

· Flaubert tried on charges of immorality for the adulterous scenes

· Emma as unfulfilled dreamer, failed Romantic hero (a sort of female Don Quixote)

· triumph of the banal and base (i.e. Homais)

· minimal dialogue: “the unspoken comes into sharp focus” (Wall, ix); unclear narration (seems to switch)

· "Madame Bovary, c'est moi"

· "the author, in his work, must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere" (Flaubert)