Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners (Oxford World's Classics) Book

Beginning in 1851, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) worked steadily for five years on Madame Bovary. After the book was serialized in the Revue de Paris, Flaubert, his publisher, and his printer were brought up on charges of offending public morals. They were acquitted after a pitched legal battle, and the book sold enormously well. Outwardly the story is simple: an overly romantic, pretty young woman marries a dull provincial doctor, commits adultery, becomes disillusioned, and meets a tragic end. But the structure of the novel is bound up in a tight framework of cross-references, shared meanings, and correspondences. Nothing in it is random; each detail contributes to a particular effect. As Flaubert put in a letter shortly after the novel came out, "The artist must be in his work as God is in his creation, invisible and all powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him." His presence in Madame Bovary is exactly thus.Read More