Claude Monet, The Cathedral of Rouen, in Full Sunlight,
Canvas, 1894, Museum of Impressionism
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Basic Facts
Main Sources: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller,
in Maynard Mack, René Wellek et al., eds., Norton Anthology of
World Masterpieces , Sixth Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992); Madame
Bovary, trans. Mildred Marmur, "Foreword" by Mary McCarthy
(New York: New American Library, 1964); Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Chronology
- 1821 Flaubert born in Rouen
- father surgeon, mother was doctor's daughter;
- 1836 passion for Elisa Schlésinger, a married woman eleven years
his elder; model for Marie Arnoux in L'Education sentimentale (1869-70)
- 1837 Mémoires d'un fou
- 1840-41, studied law in Paris against his will, failed exams
- 1843 nervous disease, gave up law
- 1846 death of father and sister Caroline; Flaubert retired to Croisset,
near Rouen on the Seine, with his mother and infant niece; met poet Louise
Colet at studio of painter James Pradier
- 1847 walking tour of the Loire and Brittany's coast, journal Par
les champs et par les grèves
- 1849-51 travels with Maxime du Camp through the middle east, Egypt,
Greece, Italy
- 1855 end of relationship with Colet
- 1862 Salammbô, action of novel situated in ancient Carthage;
about daughter of Carthaginian general Hamilcar; mercenaries revolt 240-237
B.C., record of Polybius
- 1874 La Tentation de Saint Antoine, ambition to create French
Faust
- 1877 Trois Contes ("Three Tales"): "A Simple
Heart," "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler," "Herodias"
- 1881 Bouvard et Pécuchet, attack on pseudo-science
General
- philosophical influences: pessimism, nihilism, the unknown, Alfred
Le Poittevin, Spinoza, Herbert Spencer; science and religion as two poles
of thought
- friendships with George Sand, Ivan Turgenev, Émile Zola, Guy
de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet
- against 'idées reçues' ('received ideas')
- hate of the bourgeois, middle class ideology and way of life
- pursuit of perfection: "le seul mot juste"
- attempt to create a beauty beyond conventional morality and social
realities
- combination of Romantic ideals and attempt at objectivity, scientific
detachment
- Realism
Madame Bovary (1857)
- antiromantic novel with underlying Romantic impulses
- portrayal of bourgeois life
- Flaubert tried on charges of immorality
- Emma as unfulfilled dreamer, failed Romantic hero, a sort of female
Don Quixote
- "triumph of baseness [i.e. Homais]" (Wellek)
- "Madame Bovary, c'es moi"
- Dr. Larivière "who appears fleetingly like an apparition
from a saner, loftier world of good sense and professional devotion";
"redeeming power of art"; "victory of art over reality,
a passionate search for Beauty, which he knew to be an illusion" (Wellek)
- "the author, in his work, must be like God in the universe, present
everywhere and visible nowhere" (Flaubert)
Discussion Issues (Source: Fidel Fajardo-Acosta):
- title of novel: Madame Bovary vs Emma, reflection of issues of her
definition, ownership, and entrapment by bourgeois society
- issue of Emma's fascination with aristocrats, Rodolphe, ball at La
Vaubyessard, Marquis d'Andervilliers
- clothes as social restraints; descriptions of Emma undoing laces of
her corset; 'savage' way of undressing, act of self-liberation
- description of eyes of Madame Bovary; essential narcissism of bourgeois
mentality; self-absorption; blindness to the desire/darkness of the other;
inability and/or unwillingness to recognize or validate the desire of the
other
- definitions of love; 'love' of Charles for Emma as manifestation of
bourgeois narcissism and acquisitiveness
- literary inspiration of Emma's dreams and desires
- Bovary, 'bovine', herd animals meant for slaughter and exploitation,
indifferent to ideals
- issue of money, underlying economic issues; blind beggar as symbol
of results/consequences of bourgeois capitalism, what the society does
not wish to see or acknowledge; Berthe's fate as exposure of the consequences
of bourgeois industrial capitalism; young life absorbed and destroyed by
the mill, the machine which embodies the routinized, unimaginative, exploitative,
selfish and stagnant essence of bourgeois life
- Homais as quack and self-serving monster under guise of erudite and
public benefactor
- bourgeois behavior: mixture of greed and complacent hypocrisy
- serpents/dragons, visible and invisible symbols of an underlying evil
related to the bourgeois way of life, deceit,hypocrisy, envy, opportunism,
predatoriness; serpent is desire in concealment as opposed to Emma who
is desire made explicit and unafraid of exposure to light of day; main
snakes are Homais, Guillaumin, Lheureux
- courage of Emma in pursuit of her dreams
- Madame Bovary's vulgar desires and passions also as exposure of the
soul of her society, shallow materialism, prostituted subservience to money
and power; secret life of cravings and opportunistic/hypocritical approaches
to their fulfilment
- images of rotating machines (carriages, lathe, etc.), symbols related
to industrialization, profit-making, the hidden engines of a tragic narrative;
related to trope of repetition and entrapment (circularity and endlessness
of infernal torment, cf. Dante, Virgil); changelessness, bourgeois complacency
- Maître Guillaumin, notary, business lawyer, capitalist; description
of him eating meat, predator
- theme of stoning of the adulterous woman; Flaubert as Christ in her
defense
- Flaubert in love with Emma, that is, with himself; recognition of bourgeois
character of the self, novel as self-critical act
- issue of judgment of the other; gossip and judgmental character of
the bourgeois society; a snake hidden behind every window, every store
counter, spying on and judging the neighbor
- bridal veil on corpse of Emma; Charles's cry of horror, vision of corrupted
self, truth of the bourgeois existence, rotten to the core and self-destructing;
similar effect in Emma's reactions to the sight of the beggar
- death of Emma as murder by society rather than suicide; Emma used by
those around her, lovers, money-lenders, merchants, husband, etc.
- beauty over morality, morality over beauty; use of aesthetic procedure
in reformulation and relaunching of moral imperatives; Flaubert as creator
of a new type of aestheticized morality