In this blog post, we will examine the creation, plot, character analysis, and literary significance of ‘Madame Bovary’, focusing on Gustave Flaubert’s life and the background of his work.

Flaubert’s Birth and Early Life

Gustave Flaubert was born in 1821 at the municipal hospital in Rouen, northern France. His father served as the head of surgery at that hospital, and the young Flaubert naturally spent a great deal of time there. His father tried to prevent the hospital’s gloomy atmosphere from seeping into their home, while his mother, who scorned the pleasures of the world, devoted herself to caring for her husband and children.
Flaubert grew up climbing the wall with his younger sister to gaze at the rows of corpses in the hospital’s anatomy lab, visible through the grapevines—an experience that instilled in him a pessimistic worldview. Because of this, he later remarked, “When I see a child, I think of an old man; when I see a cradle, I think of a grave; and when I see a woman’s naked body, I think of her skeleton.”
On the other hand, his experience of learning humor and wit while performing plays with friends at school influenced his development into a writer who embraced both satire and humor, rather than remaining a mere pessimist. In Flaubert’s thinking, pessimism and wit rolled side by side like the two wheels of a car. Furthermore, his love for Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’ and Shakespeare became the foundation supporting his literary style.

Education and Youth — The Formation of Literary Tastes

Flaubert entered middle school at the age of twelve and experienced a new environment—life in a boarding school—where he had to live communally with others. Rouen Middle School still maintained a militaristic discipline that restricted free reading, forcing Flaubert to light a candle and secretly read Victor Hugo’s works under the covers.
During his high school years, influenced by Romantic literature such as Byron and Musset, he experienced periods of melancholy and restlessness, producing numerous early drafts. Some of these works can be seen as precursors to ‘Madame Bovary’. The emotional ups and downs and romantic reveries of this period are fully reflected in his early works.
Although Flaubert remained a lifelong bachelor, he met a woman named Élisa Foucault on the coast of Trouville in 1836 and experienced true love; her image later served as the model for several of his works. In particular, ‘The Diary of a Madman’ (1838) and ‘November’ (1842), written when he was 22, foreshadow the themes and sentiments that would later lead to his major works.
In ‘The Diary of a Madman’, Flaubert observed the ennui of city life and bourgeois society, as well as the misery of human existence, rather than dreaming of great historical passions. In ‘November’ (1842), written four years later, he developed the themes of his youth with greater maturity and depicted the psychology of love with greater precision. In this work, he wrote, “To dream of love is to dream of everything. It is the infinity that overflows in happiness and the mystery born of joy.”

Early Adulthood and the Decision to Become a Writer — Life in Paris and Ill Health

Flaubert enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Paris in 1843, but as it did not suit his temperament, he spent his days in a state of melancholy; around this time, he began writing ‘Education Sentimentale’, which drew on his experiences living in Paris. In 1844, while driving a carriage, he suffered an incident that appeared to be a nervous breakdown; he returned to Rouen to recuperate, and this experience solidified his resolve to devote himself entirely to literature.
After completing his treatment and convalescence, Flaubert settled in a house in Croisset, near Rouen, and devoted himself to writing. His subsequent creative activities and works developed based on the literary attitude and methodology he refined during this period.

The Writing, Serialization, and Reprints of ‘Madame Bovary’

Flaubert began writing ‘Madame Bovary’ immediately after returning from a trip to Egypt in 1851. After grueling twelve-hour writing sessions each day, he completed the manuscript in 1856. When the work began serialization in ‘La Revue de Paris’ through the introduction of his friend Maxime du Camp, it gained explosive popularity.
However, despite the work’s popularity, it faced accusations of offending public morals and blasphemy, leading to a trial. Flaubert did not view this matter as a mere moral issue but recognized it as a political issue concerning social hypocrisy. At the time, ‘La Revue de Paris’ was a freedom-oriented magazine that refused to compromise with those in power, making it a publication viewed as a threat by the government; consequently, both the novel and the magazine where it was serialized found themselves at the center of a legal controversy.
At the conclusion of the trial, Flaubert was acquitted, and the incident actually served to make his name widely known.

Flaubert’s Later Works and Final Years

Following ‘Madame Bovary’, Flaubert published the historical novels ‘Salammbô’ (1862) and ‘Education Sentimentale’ (1869), followed by ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’ in 1872 and the short story collection ‘Three Tales’ in 1877. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1880 while working on ‘Bouvard and Pécuchet’, which remained unfinished at the time of his death.

Literary Characteristics and Criticism of ‘Madame Bovary’

‘Madame Bovary’ is a work that Flaubert painstakingly completed over a five-year period between the ages of 30 and 35; it shines with meticulous research, precise descriptions, and prose refined through numerous revisions. Flaubert’s spirit of cool-headed realism—seeking to uncover the facts as much as possible without subjective emotions or excessive fantasy—permeates the entire work.
Nevertheless, Flaubert’s unique romantic sensibility flows beneath the surface of the work. Flaubert once said, “Madame Bovary is myself,” which means more than simply that he used a single woman as a model. The work is imbued with his loathing and compassion for an ordinary, dreamless bourgeois society, as well as his despair over the reality that created it.

Plot Summary

The plot is roughly as follows. Charles Bovary, an ordinary medical student, passes his medical licensing exam and settles in a small town near Rouen, where he marries an older widow. After opening his own practice, he makes a house call to the home of the wealthy landowner Rouault, where he becomes captivated by Rouault’s daughter, Emma; following his wife’s death, he remarries Emma.
Ever since her days at the convent, Emma had longed for the glamorous life of the aristocracy and dreamed of a romantic and enchanting marriage, but she finds no satisfaction in her monotonous, ordinary married life or her simple-minded husband. One day, after being invited to a party at an aristocratic mansion and witnessing their lavish lifestyle firsthand, she finds her own tedious daily life even more unbearable.
Charles moves to Yonville in an effort to change Emma’s surroundings, but Yonville, too, is full of vulgar people. Emma and Léon, who works as a notary’s clerk, develop mutual feelings, but Léon leaves for Paris. Left lonely once again, Emma is approached by the womanizer Rodolphe, who skillfully captures her heart. As her relationship with Rodolphe continues, he eventually grows tired of her and turns his back on her, leaving Emma deeply heartbroken.
Just as she is nearly recovered from being abandoned by Rodolphe, Emma runs into Léon—who has returned from Paris—at the Rouen theater. The passionate feelings between them are rekindled, but even in her relationship with Léon, Emma always feels a sense of emptiness that nothing can fill. She gradually drifts toward a life devoted solely to pleasure, and eventually runs up a huge debt due to her relationship with Léon and her extravagant spending.
When disaster strikes, Emma, in the depths of despair, commits suicide by ingesting arsenic. Charles, left behind, falls ill and dies, while the pharmacist Homme receives the “Medal of Honor”; the fates of the characters thus conclude in different directions.

The Model for Emma Bovary and an Analysis of Her Character

Delphine, the wife of Eugène Delamarre—a practicing physician on the outskirts of Rouen—is often cited as the model for Emma Bovary. There is a recorded real-life incident in which she fell into debt due to an illicit affair and committed suicide by poisoning. However, it is more reasonable to view Flaubert as depicting the general reality of ordinary women living in rural France rather than attempting to portray a single individual.
Emma detests the trivial realities surrounding her: her tedious country life, the snobbish bourgeois society, her monotonous daily routine, and her simple-minded husband, whose thoughts are “as ordinary as a sidewalk.” At the same time, she believes that “somewhere there is a place that brings happiness,” and she yearns for it, losing herself in daydreams.
Jules de Gautier termed this tendency “Bovarysm,” referring to the psychology in which escapist and exaggerated romantic expectations are shattered upon colliding with the ordinariness of reality. Although the subjects of Emma’s daydreams are, in reality, ordinary and ridiculous people, she idealizes them as heroic and aristocratic figures.
Emma’s life was a series of failed attempts to validate a world of fantasy detached from reality. Her actions ultimately amount to nothing more than ordinary affairs, and in the end, she—like Homère and the other characters—is condemned by the author as an insignificant being defined by social norms and conventions.
At the same time, Flaubert’s own statement that “Madame Bovary is none other than myself” suggests that Emma is not merely a narrow-minded and vulgar character. She is also a figure with a sensitive, vulnerable nature and deep despair, and this duality elevates the work beyond a simple social novel to a unique position in French literature.