Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French novelist who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. With his fellow French authors Stendhal and Balzac, Flaubert was one of the seminal figures of what would become the school of literary realism. More than any of the other realists, Flaubert was exactingly—even obsessively—concerned with precision. No other novelist, with the possible exception of Musil several decades later, was so eminently concerned with the exact precision of words as Flaubert. Notoriously fastidious, Flaubert worked and reworked his few novels with tremendous attention to detail, agonizing for days over the wording of even a single sentence.

In this respect Flaubert is, ironically, almost the antithesis of his close contemporary and fellow realist Balzac; for while Balzac wrote prodigious amounts of novels, stories, and essays in a massive (and ultimately unfinished) project, Flaubert spent his life meticulously crafting a handful of books. The differences between Flaubert and his fellow French realists does not end there, however. Flaubert is often considered by scholars to be as much a romantic as he was a realist. In terms of temperment, Flaubert was strikingly unlike Balzac or Stendhal; he had no interest in Paris or the modern world which it represented. Instead, like the great French Romantic poet Victor Hugo, he spent most of his life in the country in solitude, disgusted with the status quo of general society. Thus, although a distinctly modern author in terms of his psychological acuity and his overriding concern with presenting the exact truth, Flaubert's own attitudes were distinctly Romantic.

Perhaps it is precisely because of Flaubert's position as an intermediary between the highly emotional Romantic and highly unsentimental modern periods that he is of such great value to us as a writer and recorder of his times. Flaubert, though at times cynical to the point of misanthropy, was nonetheless indisputably the most gifted of all the major French realists in that he, more than any other writer of his time—perhaps, it is arguable, more than any other writer of his century—was concerned above all else with the perfection not of his ideas but of his writing. Flaubert's meticulous attention to his craft allowed him to produce some of the most finely wrought, intricately plotted, and beautifully crafted works of fiction ever produced in any language. His influence on the writing style not only of French authors but of European, American, and other authors around the globe is unprecedented.

Life

Flaubert's father, who serves as a model for the character Dr. Larivière in Madame Bovary, was a surgeon in practice at Rouen; his mother was from some of the oldest Norman families. Flaubert was educated in his native city and did not leave it until 1840, when he went to Paris to study law. As a youth he is said to have been idle at school, but to have been occupied with literature from the age of eleven. Flaubert in his youth was reported to be full of vigor with a certain shy grace, enthusiastic, intensely individual, and apparently without a trace of ambition.

He loved the country and found Paris extremely distasteful. He made the acquaintance of Victor Hugo, and towards the close of 1840 he travelled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. Returning to Paris, he wasted his time daydreaming, living on his patrimony. In 1846, Flaubert abandoned Paris and the study of the law, returning to Croisset, close to Rouen, where he lived with his mother. This estate, a house in a pleasant piece of ground which ran down to the Seine, became Flaubert's home for the remainder of his life. From 1846 to 1854 he had an affair with the poet Louise Colet; his letters to her have been preserved, and according to Émile Faguet, their affair was the only sentimental episode of any importance in the life of Flaubert, who never married. His principal friend at this time was Maxime du Camp, with whom he travelled in Brittany in 1846 and to Greece and Egypt in 1849. This trip made a profound impression upon the imagination of Flaubert. From this time forth, save for occasional visits to Paris, he did not stir from Croisset.

In 1850, on returning from the East he began writing Madame Bovary. He had previously written a novel, The Temptation of St. Anthony, but was unhappy with the result. It took him six years to write Madame Bovary. The novel was serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1857. The government brought an action against the publisher and against the author on the charge of immorality, but both were acquitted. When Madame Bovary appeared in book form it met with a very warm reception. Flaubert paid a visit to Carthage in 1858 in order to gather material for his next novel, Salammbô, which was not finished until 1862 in spite of the author's ceaseless labors.

Making use of many recollections of his youth and childhood, he took up the study of contemporary manners again, writing L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education). The composition occupied him for seven years, and was published in 1869. Up to this time Flaubert's sequestered and laborious life had been comparatively happy, but soon suffered a series of misfortunes. During the war of 1870, Prussian soldiers occupied his house. He began to suffer from nervous maladies.

His best friends were taken from him by death or by misunderstanding; in 1872 he lost his mother, and his circumstances became greatly reduced. He was very tenderly cared for by his niece, Caroline Commanville; he enjoyed a rare intimacy of friendship with George Sand, with whom he carried on a correspondence of immense artistic interest. He occasionally saw his Parisian acquaintances, Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt; but nothing prevented the close of Flaubert's life from being desolate and melancholy. He did not cease, however, to work with the same intensity and thoroughness. La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, fragments of which had been published as early as 1857, was at length completed and sent to press in 1874, but in the same year he was subjected to the disappointment caused by the failure of his drama Le Candidat. In 1877 Flaubert published Three Tales (Trois contes), Un Cœur simple, La Légende de Saint-Julien l'Hospitalier and Hérodias. He spent the remainder of his life toiling over a vast satire on the futility of human knowledge and the omnipresence of mediocrity, which he left unfinished. This is the depressing and bewildering Bouvard et Pécuchet (posthumously printed, 1881), which he believed to be his masterpiece.

Flaubert aged rapidly after 1870, dying from apoplexy in 1880 at the age of only 58. He died at Croisset but was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A beautiful monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen in 1890.

Flaubert was shy, and yet extremely sensitive and arrogant; he passed from silence to an indignant and noisy flow of language. The same inconsistencies marked his physical nature; he had the build of a guardsman with a Viking head, but his health was uncertain from childhood, and he was neurotic to the last degree. This ruddy giant was secretly gnawed by misanthropy and disgust of life. His hatred of the bourgeois began in his childhood and developed into a kind of monomania. He despised his fellow-men, their habits, their lack of intelligence, their contempt for beauty, with a passionate scorn which has been compared to that of an ascetic monk.

Work and legacy

Flaubert's curious modes of composition favored and were emphasized by his own peculiarities. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes occupying a week in the completion of one page, never satisfied with what he had composed, violently tormenting his brain for the best turn of a phrase, the most absolutely final adjective. His incessant labors were not unrewarded. His private letters show that he was not one of those to whom easy and correct language is naturally given; he gained his extraordinary perfection only through his Herculean effort. Flaubert was notoriously perfectionistic about his writing and claimed to always be searching for le mot juste (the right word).

The exactitude with which he adapts his expression to his purpose is seen in all parts of his work, but particularly in the portraits he draws of the figures in his principal romances.

Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet and Zola. But even after the decline of the realistic school Flaubert did not lose prestige; other facets of his genius caught the light. It has been perceived that he was not merely realistic, but real; that his clairvoyance was almost boundless; that he saw certain phenomena more clearly than the best of observers had done. Flaubert is a writer who must always appeal more to other authors than to the world at large, because the art of writing, the indefatigable pursuit of perfect expression, was always before him, and because he hated the lax felicities of improvisation as a disloyalty to the most sacred procedures of the literary artist.

His Œuvres Complètes (8 vols., 1885) were printed from the original manuscripts, and included, besides the works mentioned already, the two plays, Le Candidat and Le Château des cœurs. Another edition (10 vols.) appeared in 1873–1885. Flaubert's correspondence with George Sand was published in 1884 with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant.

He has been admired or written about by almost every major literary personality of the 20th century, including philosophers such as Pierre Bourdieu. Georges Perec named Sentimental Education as one of his favorite novels. The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is another great admirer of Flaubert. Apart from Perpetual Orgy, which is solely devoted to Flaubert's art, one can find lucid discussions in Llosa's recently published Letters to a Young Novelist.

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is Flaubert's first published and easily most famous novel. It remains one of the most frequently taught works of Frech literature both in that country and in comparative literature departments in universities across the world. The book was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialised in La Revue de Paris between 1 October and 15 December 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made it notorious. After Flaubert was acquitted on 7 February, it became a best-seller, and is now seen as one of the first modern realistic novels.

The novel focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns.

Summary

Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. A doctor, Charles Bovary, marries a beautiful farm girl, Emma Rouault. She is filled with a desire for luxury and romance, which stems from her reading of popular novels. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy. Emma believes that the birth of a baby boy will "cure" their marriage. After Emma gets pregnant and eventually gives birth to a daughter, she believes her life is virtually over.

Charles decides that Emma needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes (now Tôtes) into an equally stultifying village, Yonville (traditionally based on the town Ry). Emma flirts with one of the first people she meets, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life." When he leaves to study in Paris, Emma begins an affair with a rich landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger. Swept away by romantic fantasy, she makes a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, does not love her, and breaks off the plan the evening before it was to take place, with a letter at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that she falls deathly ill, for a time turning to religion.

Emma and Charles attend the opera in Rouen one night, and Emma reencounters Léon. They begin an affair: Emma travels to the city each week to meet him, while Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons. Meanwhile, Emma is spending exorbitant amounts of money. When Emma's debts begin to pile up and people begin to suspect her adultery, she sees suicide as her only means of escape. She swallows arsenic and dies, painfully and slowly. The loyal Charles is distraught, even more so after finding the letters that Rodolphe wrote to her. Soon after, he dies, leaving their daughter an orphan.

Chapter-by-chapter

Part One

1. Charles Bovary's childhood, student days and first marriage
2. Charles meets Rouault and daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
3. Charles proposes to Emma
4. The wedding
5. The new household at Tostes
6. An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
7. Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
8. The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
9. Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move

Part Two

1. Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
2. Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
3. Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
4. A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
5. Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
6. Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
7. Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
8. The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
9. Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
10. Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
11. Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
12. Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
13. Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
14. Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
15. Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucie de Lammermoor

Part Three

1. Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; censored cab-ride
2. Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior has died; Lheureux's bill
3. She visits Léon in Rouen
4. She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
5. Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
6. Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
7. Emma begs for money from several people
8. Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
9. Emma lies in state
10. The funeral
11. Charles finds letters; his death

Style

The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialized, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. Due to this decision some accused Flaubert of glorifying adultery, creating a scandal (a rather groundless charge considering Emma's perpetual disappointment and grim fate).

Realism aims for verisimilitude, the willing suspension of disbelief, through a focus on character development and on the plain details of everyday life. The movement was a reaction to the idealism of Romanticism, a mode of thought which rules Emma's actions. She becomes increasingly dissatisfied since her larger than life fantasies are, by definition, not able to be realized. However, the notion that Flaubert is criticizing Romanticism through the persecution of Emma is complicated by his remark, "Emma Bovary, c'est moi" ("Emma Bovary is me").

Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire culture of Flaubert's time period, this being clearly illustrated by the focus on the absurdity of the scientific "rational" figures, the uselessness of the church rites, and the self-serving bourgeois Lheureux (who tricks Emma into buying off credit from him).

All the possible lifestyles any person would have stereotypically led are represented there, from farmers to viscounts to street whores; all, that is, except for a life of taking responsibility for oneself in such a way as to have concern for others and not one's own glory or profit.

Bibliography

Major Works

• Madame Bovary (1857)
• Salammbô (1862)
• L'Éducation sentimentale (1869)
• La Tentation de Saint Antoine (187])
• Trois contes (1877)
• Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881, posthumously published)
• Dictionnaire des idées reçues (1911, posthumously published, tr. Dictionary of Received Ideas)

Correspondence (in English)

• Selections:
  • Selected Letters (ed. Francis Steegmuller, 1953, 2001)
  • Selected Letters (ed. Geoffrey Wall, 1997)
• Flaubert in Egypt (1972)
• Flaubert and Turgenev, a Friendship in Letters: The Complete Correspondence (ed. Barbara Beaumont, 1985)
• Correspondence with George Sand:
  • The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters, translated by Aimée G. Leffingwel McKenzie (A.L. McKensie), introduced by Stuart Sherman (1921), available at the Gutenberg website as E-text N° 5115
  • Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence (1993)

Biographical and other related publications

• Various authors, The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert, available at the Gutenberg website as E-text N° 10666.
• Hennequin, Émile, Quelques écrivains français Flaubert, Zola, Hugo, Goncourt, Huysmans, etc., available at the Gutenberg website as E-text N° 12289
• Barnes, Julian Flaubert's Parrot, ISBN 0330289764

External links

• Overview
• Multilingual research links
• Flaubert entry at the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism site
• Bibliomania page
• Long, general page about Flaubert
• A comprehensive site in French

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