Madame Bovary

MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert THE AUTHOR Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was born in Rouen, France, the son of a wealthy doctor. His first novel, Madame Bovary (1857), was by far his most successful. It allowed him to rise to the heights of the Paris... More

MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert THE AUTHOR Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was born in Rouen, France, the son of a wealthy doctor. His first novel, Madame Bovary (1857), was by far his most successful. It allowed him to rise to the heights of the Paris intelligentsia and enjoy both wealth (though he squandered most of it) and popular acclaim. Despite these successes, however, Flaubert’s life was not a happy one. In his teens he became infatuated with a married woman ten years older than himself, and the disillusionment that resulted from the failed love affair affected the rest of his life. In 1846 he took a mistress, poet Louise Colet, though he rarely saw her and carried on the affair largely through correspondence. After the affair ended in 1855, he contented himself with frequenting prostitutes. Critics and the public were shocked by the open portrayal of adultery in his first novel, and the scandal in the closely-censored artistic environment of Napoleon III led to Flaubert and his Less