Flaubert met Colet in 1846, not long after his sister, Caroline, died in childbirth. Shortly before Madame Bovary was published, Flaubert ended a years-long affair with the married poet Louise Colet. FLAUBERT'S LOVE LETTERS REVEAL HIS CREATIVE PROCESS WHILE WRITING MADAME BOVARY. Held by a local aristocrat, the experience impressed Flaubert so much that he also described elements of it in his early short story ' Quidquid Volueris' (1837) and in an 1850 letter to a friend. The event was actually inspired by a real-life dance that Flaubert attended with his parents in 1836, when he was 14 years old.

Replete with dancing, fine food, and elite guests, the glittering affair whets Emma’s appetite for a life of luxury. One of Madame Bovary’s most memorable chapters might be the one in which Emma attends a ball thrown by one of Charles’s patients, the Marquis d’Andervilliers. FLAUBERT ATTENDED A REAL-LIFE BALL JUST LIKE THE ONE EMMA BOVARY WENT TO. Following Flaubert's legal battle, Madame Bovary was published as a two-volume novel in 1857. The trial lasted for just one day, and Flaubert and La Revue de Paris were both acquitted a week later. While Emma ultimately gets her comeuppance, Flaubert’s frank descriptions of adultery scandalized French readers and led to an obscenity trial. In pursuit of passionate love and luxurious possessions, Emma engages in extramarital affairs and squanders her husband’s money. Emma swiftly grows disillusioned with both her husband and their provincial ways, especially after she attends a ball thrown by one of her husband’s aristocratic patients. Madame Bovary tells the story of Emma, a peasant who marries an older doctor, Charles Bovary, to escape the dullness of rural life. MADAME BOVARY SHOCKED FRANCE WITH ITS EXPLICIT DESCRIPTIONS OF ADULTERY. Read on to learn more about Flaubert's inspiration for the character of Emma Bovary, his painstaking creative process, and the obscenity trial that threatened the novel's publication. His debut novel Madame Bovary, originally serialized in the French literary magazine La Revue de Paris in late 1856, established Flaubert as a master of French realism. A diagnosis of epilepsy forced him to abandon his legal education, which conveniently gave him the opportunity to pursue a literary career. French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) studied law, but he was born to be a novelist.

Flauberts bovary