Author of Madame Bovary, perfectionist of modern novelistic style
A French novelist who, by an almost merciless polishing of language, raised the novel into a precise art. He sought "the one right word" (le mot juste), often revising a single page for days. Madame Bovary tells of a country doctor’s wife who, unwilling to be ordinary and steeped in romantic fantasy, moves step by step toward adultery, debt, and suicide. He presents it all with a cool, unjudging objectivity, founding the modern novel’s tradition of "the author withdrawing, letting the story speak for itself."
Asked who the model for Madame Bovary was, Flaubert answered: "Madame Bovary, c’est moi." The writer who rendered his heroine so coolly and objectively privately admitted that, like her, he carried a longing with nowhere to rest. The line tells the secret of the modern novel: beneath the most restrained pen often hides the author’s deepest self.
Madame Bovary was prosecuted in 1857 as an offense to public morals (and acquitted), which this site states.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.