Madame Bovary - illustrations, biography, heroes, quotes, Gustave Flaubert

History of character creation

In 1851, after another unsuccessful attempt to write an outstanding literary work, Gustave Flaubert fell into prolonged despondency. The man was brought out of his sad state by editor Maxime du Kan, who recommended that the writer try his own strength by creating a novel whose main idea would be more prosaic.

The poet Louis Bouillet, who was present during the conversation, reminded Flaubert of the tragedy that played out with the Delamare family. The story that the acquaintance mentioned was well known to Gustave; the writer’s mother personally knew the affected family.

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The name of the “prototype” of the main character is Delphine Couturier. A married woman who indulged in numerous adulteries committed suicide at the age of 27. And her husband, unable to bear the revealed truth about his wife, died a year later. This is how the author found the heroes of the novel.

The writer spent more than 5 years at work, carefully studying information for the plot and rewriting the characteristics of the characters. And in 1856, the novel appeared on the pages of the literary magazine Revue de Paris.

The work in the genre of a love story, which tells about the promiscuous affairs of a doctor’s wife, was published chapter by chapter over the course of three months. After a short time, Gustave Flaubert was brought to trial - the author so openly depicted marital adultery that he was accused of insulting morality.

Such a verdict, later overturned, only increased the popularity of the work, making Madame Bovary a worldwide phenomenon. An interesting fact is that the book “Anna Karenina” was subjected to the same criticism. Both of these heroines came from the pen almost 17 years apart and were repeatedly compared by literary researchers.

The real Emma Bovary (Delphine Couturier)

The image of Flaubert's Madame Emma Bovary was born thanks to an event that occurred in the life of its creator, when he was 30 years old and when his literary future was still very uncertain. Before this event, his prospects were unpromising and rather vague. For nine months of the year, Flaubert wrote six hours a day, locked in an office whose windows overlooked the Seine. He spent the remaining three months in Paris, gaining life experience.

In 1851, after a trip to Egypt, Palestine and Greece, Flaubert wrote the first version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Having finished this work, he asked two of his friends - Maxime du Can, editor of the Revue de Paris, and Louis Bouillet, a modest rural poet, to come to him. Flaubert said that he wanted to read the manuscript of his new work to them. He read “Temptation” for almost four days, eight hours at a time without a break. Having finished reading at midnight, Flaubert awaited the verdict. One of his listeners spoke very bluntly: “We think that you should throw the manuscript into the fire and never speak about it again.”

The next day, a deeply disappointed Flaubert walked with du Cane and Bouillet through the garden. He complained to them about his creative inadequacy. He had several historical subjects in mind, but he was not sure that any of them were of any value, so he had no desire to return to his desk. A fresh topic was what he thought he needed.

After listening to this, Maxime du Cay warned him: “As soon as you feel that you are irresistibly drawn to poetic soaring,” he said, “choose a topic where this pompous style will be so absurd that you will have to be on your guard all the time and as a result you will be forced to give it up. Take an everyday story,” du Cane added, “some episode from bourgeois life and force yourself to tell it in a natural manner.”

Flaubert began to say that he did not know such episodes from bourgeois life, but Louis Bundet interrupted him:

Why don't you describe the history of the Delamar family?
Yes, that's an idea! - exclaimed Flaubert.

When Bouillet asked whether he remembered this tragic story well, Flaubert replied that he remembered it well. So thirty years later, Maxime du Cane recalled the day when Flaubert was given the idea of creating Madame Bovary.

Until September 1851, when Flaubert actually began to write Madame Bovary, and perhaps while working on the novel for four and a half years, he tried to study all the ins and outs of the prototype. And what did Flaubert learn?

Eugene Delamare, who studied surgery at the Rouen hospital under Father Flaubert, was a hardworking but mediocre student. Having failed several crucial exams and having no means to hire tutors or increase the number of practical classes in the hospital, he had to be content with a position as a doctor in a remote provincial corner. He soon married an older woman, a widow - a fairly common occurrence in the French provinces - and took up a position as a doctor in a rural area called Rie. After the death of his wife, he was left alone. He needed a new girlfriend. At this time, he met an attractive 17-year-old girl named Delphine Couturier.

Delphine had straight blond hair, parted in the middle. Her eyes seemed to “change color depending on the light,” as her neighbor said. She was slim. Having apparently received first-hand information, Flaubert described her fictional double in more detail: “But the eyes were really beautiful - dark, with long eyelashes that seemed black - and an open, bold and trusting look... Her black hair was separated by a thin parting , going down to the back of the head, were combed so smoothly that they seemed like a single piece: barely covering the ears, they were gathered at the back into a lush chignon and shaded the temples with a wavy line; The village doctor saw such a line for the first time in his life. The girl’s cheeks were pink.”

Delphine was the youngest daughter of one of Delamar's patients, a wealthy farmer from the neighboring village of Blainville-Crevon. She was educated at the Ursuline convent in Rouen, and her head was full of dreams inspired by novels. On August 7, 1839, Delphine Couturier became the second Madame Delamare.

At first, Delphine was glad that she had married a mature man, a doctor, but she soon realized that Delamar was incredibly boring, and Rea’s small company was depressingly suffocating. Flaubert very accurately reflected Delphine's feelings when describing Emma Bovary's growing dislike for Charles Bovary. Madame Bovary dreamed of a sensual, exciting lover from the world of gondolas and tropical alleys. Instead, she got a dumbass for a husband; his “conversations... were as flat as a street panel... He could neither swim, nor fencing, nor shoot a pistol... His impulses acquired regularity: he hugged her at certain hours. It was like a habit among other habits, something like a dessert that you know about in advance while sitting at a monotonous lunch.” Both lunch and what followed it all became unbearable. During lunch, “he will go over all the people he has met, all the villages he has visited, all the recipes he has prescribed, and, satisfied with himself, he will eat the rest of the roast, pick at the cheese, nibble on an apple, and finish off a decanter of wine. And then he’ll go into the bedroom, lie on his back and snore.” Often, when left alone during the day, “Emma repeated: “Oh my God!” Why did I get married!

She wondered whether, under some other set of circumstances, she might not have met another person; she tried to imagine what these unfulfilled events, this completely different life, this unknown husband would be like. In fact, not everyone is like Charles! He could be handsome, smart, sophisticated, attractive - and, probably, these were the people her friends from the monastery married. What are they doing now? Everyone, of course, in the city, in the noise of the streets, in the roar of theaters, in the splendor of ballrooms - everyone lives a life that makes the heart rejoice and feelings blossom. And she? Her existence is cold, like an attic with a window facing north, and boredom, a silent spider, weaves its web in the shadows throughout all corners of her heart.”

What to do? “Will this miserable existence really last forever? Will she never get rid of him? After all, she is no worse than all those women who live happily. In Vaubiersard she saw more than one duchess whose figure was heavier and her manners more vulgar than hers. And Emma cursed God for the injustice; she pressed her head against the wall and cried; she yearned for the noisy and brilliant life, for the nightly masquerades, for the daring joys and the unknown self-forgetfulness that should have been hidden in them... But in the depths of her soul she was waiting for some event. Like a sailor on a shipwrecked ship, in despair she looked around the desert of her life and kept looking for a white sail in the mists of the distant horizon... But nothing happened to her. That's how God wants it! The future seemed like a dark corridor, at the end of which there was a tightly locked door.”

This is what Flaubert writes based on his understanding of Delphine Delamarre, and he understood her well. Delphine in real life did not want to leave the distant door at the end of the dark corridor tightly locked. She chose to open it and break free. Despising her bourgeois husband and the boring life he offered her, Delphine highly valued her intelligence and her beauty and believed in the possibility of turning dreams into reality. Without doubting success, she was convinced that she would find a more pleasant and dignified existence for herself.

She began to spend an outrageous amount of money on outfits, and soon Delamar, unaware of anything, found himself deeply in debt. When she got bored with this orgy of shopping, she began to openly attract the attention of other men. For the first time she cheated with a neighbor, then she got together with a huge guy, a farm worker, then with a clerk from a notary’s office, then with other “young clerks,” and then with anyone. Flaubert wrote about her literary double: “And then she began to remember the heroines of the books she had read, and the lyrical round dance of unfaithful wives sang in her memory with charming, familiar voices.” In the field, in the inn, and in back rooms, Delphine Delamare secretly took lover after lover in a tireless search for an ideal that did not exist. Indulging in sensual pleasures, she did not pay attention to her husband, her little daughter, friends and neighbors, and did not attend mass.

Old Mrs. Delamare tried to warn her son. But he adored his young wife and did not pay attention to his mother’s transparent hints. Although Delphine remained as extravagant and sensual, she had difficulty finding lovers, and those with whom she did enter into a love affair disappointed her more and more. Now Delphine tried to fill her free time with something else. As her neighbor recalled, “she chose Friday to play grande dame. On this day, she lowered the curtains, lit candles and began to wait for guests who did not come.” Boredom overtook her again and again.

Finally, on March 6, 1848, in the predawn hour, Delphine Delamare, in her ninth year of marriage, when her husband’s bank account was zero and her admirers were becoming fewer and fewer, took a lethal dose of arsenic. Soon she died.

Her death was reported in a local newspaper, but the cause of death was not stated. It was dated March 7, 1848, and stated only that Delphine died at Rie, at three o'clock the morning of the previous day, at the age of 27 years. No investigation was carried out, not a single newspaper mentioned a possible suicide, and the priest did not prevent the body from being buried on consecrated ground.”

A few months after Delphine's death, grief-stricken Eugene Delamare learned all about his wife's extravagances and for the first time heard in detail about her many infidelities. Struck to madness by her intemperance, he committed suicide, leaving the little daughter he adored in the care of his ruined mother.

On the day when Bouillet reminded Flaubert of this provincial story, he told his friend many details. As Francis Steegmuller relates, “It reminded him of the black and yellow striped curtains in the drawing room of the young Madame Delamare, which had made her mother-in-law first think of Delphine’s extravagance and pretentiousness, and had given rise to gossip throughout Normandy; he also recalled how she taught her servant to address her in the third person; about how beautiful, chic, arrogant and nervous she was; about her receptions on Fridays, at which she was the only guest; about an unpaid check she left in the Rouen library. He also recalled Delamar’s dull appearance, his good-natured grayness, how pleased he was with his position, the trust, almost love, with which his patients treated him.”

Flaubert was convinced that the history of the Delamare family was excellent material for revealing his talent. He knew well what he was writing about: he hated the destructive romanticism and mediocrity of the provincial bourgeoisie, he knew Normandy, he knew the life of the people there. Two things bothered him. The story and characters of his novel were ordinary and banal.

Work on the novel progressed slowly: six pages a week. “I struggle with every sentence, but it just doesn’t work out. What a heavy oar my pen is!” He worked seven hours every day for fifty-five months. Already working on the manuscript, he continued to study every detail: he either studied novels that Emma Bovary could read, or studied the consequences of arsenic poisoning. Sometimes his work made him really sick. He recalled: “When I described the scene of the poisoning of Emma Bovary, I so clearly felt the taste of arsenic and felt so truly poisoned that I suffered two attacks of nausea, completely real, one after the other, and vomited the entire dinner from my stomach.” Sometimes he was moved by his creation. “Last Wednesday I had to get up from the table to get a handkerchief: tears were streaming down my cheeks. My own work touches me deeply.” The manuscript, kept in the municipal library of Rouen, is evidence of this titanic work: 1788 large format pages of corrections and rewrites and a final version of 487 pages.

Flaubert allowed Maxime du Can to publish the novel in six editions of the Revue de Paris between October and December 1856. This publication caused a storm. “Already with the appearance of the first chapters,” said du Kan, “our subscribers were choked with anger, calling the novel scandalous and immoral. They wrote outwardly amiable letters in which they accused us of slandering France and humiliating it in the eyes of the whole world. “Do such women really exist? Women deceiving their husbands, incurring debts, taking lovers in gardens and hotels? In our beautiful France, in the provinces where life is so pure, do such creatures live? This is impossible!"".

Society's anger was directed primarily against the realism of the novel.

Flaubert objected: “Everyone thinks that I am a passionate admirer of realism, whereas I have an aversion to it. It was precisely because I hated realism that I took up this novel. However, I equally despise that feigned idealism, which today has turned into empty ridicule.”

This made no impression on the idealists, and they decided to force the government to ban the book. As a result, Flaubert and two other people associated with the publication of the novel were put on trial for writing and publishing a pornographic and anti-religious book. The hearing ended quickly, and the court ruled:

“There is insufficient evidence that Flaubert and his two co-defendants committed the crime with which they are accused; the court drops the charges brought against them and dismisses the case without reimbursement of legal costs.”

“Madame Bovary” was free, and the novel in two books was published in April 1857. Fifteen thousand copies were sold in the first sixty days. Flaubert owed this success to a large extent to the unknown Delphine Delamare. Without publicly acknowledging the role that Delphine played in the creation of the novel, he remained in her debt. He stubbornly denied the fact that Delphine inspired him. “Nobody posed for me,” he claimed. “Nothing in Madame Bovary is true.” Madame Bovary has no prototype. This is a fictional story from beginning to end.” One day, in extreme irritation, he exclaimed: “Madame Bovary - it’s me!”

But no one except Delphine Delamare was Emma Bovary, not even Flaubert himself. Perhaps Flaubert refused to acknowledge the existence of the prototype, fearing that such recognition would cast doubt on his creative abilities. Although, having turned over time into a capricious, lonely old man, Flaubert was tired of the notoriety that accompanied the novel (“It would be nice to find a way to earn a lot of money in order to buy up all existing copies of Madame Bovary, throw them all into the fire and never hear about this book again “, he once said), more and more new editions of the novel were published and it firmly took its place among the classics of literature.

Today, in the village of Ree, postcards are sold on which Delphine Delamar is immortalized. And in the Rouen Museum hang two portraits of a young woman of amazing beauty. Both portraits depict, as legend has it, Delphine Delamare.

Delphine Delamare could not have known it, but after her death her most romantic dreams finally came true.

Biography and image of Madame Bovary

Emma Ruo was born into the family of a wealthy farmer. The girl’s mother died long ago, so the father sent the child to be raised in an Ursuline monastery, where the young romantic creature spent a lot of time secretly reading romance novels.

Having completed her studies, the matured girl returned to her native farm. Some time later, Rouault's father broke his leg, and the family was forced to turn to a local doctor, Charles Bovary.

A middle-aged man lost his head at first sight over the charming daughter of a farmer. But the married doctor did not allow himself even a hint of feelings. However, Emma’s mental tossing did not escape her. The girl’s receptive nature instantly drew for herself a noble image of Charles, who would bring variety to the drab everyday life.

Suddenly the doctor's wife dies, and Emma Ruo receives a marriage proposal. The young Madame Bovary settles in the house of a doctor, who instantly remodels it to her own taste. However, the new wife quickly becomes bored. The romantic hero of girlish dreams turned into an ordinary husband, albeit madly in love with his own wife.

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Alarmed by his wife's mental and physical condition, Charles finds a new job that allows him to move closer to Rouen. Here the beauty met the assistant notary Leon Dupuis. The young man, like the doctor’s wife, turned out to be an enthusiastic person.

The emerging adultery was prevented by the woman's pregnancy and the lover's timidity. Soon the Bovary couple gave birth to a girl, Bertha, who was not particularly interested in her mother. All her thoughts were occupied with the image of Leon, who moved to Paris, leaving the married lady to dream of unearthly passion.

The next passion of the sentimental dreamer was the landowner Rodolphe Boulanger, whose biography every gossip knew in detail. The man, unlike the inexperienced Leon, throws all his strength into conquering the beauty.

Pretty soon the secret relationship begins to weigh on Boulanger. Instead of a convenient mistress living nearby, the man gets a distraught woman. Her pompous remarks seem to repeat quotes from romance novels she read in her youth. Emma demands vows of love, makes scenes and gives expensive gifts, which she borrows from a local merchant in secret from her husband.

Charles’s professional problems finally convince the woman that it is necessary to leave her husband and connect her life with her lover. Under intense pressure, the landowner promises to take her away from the city, but at the last moment he changes his mind and leaves the beauty.

Such a blow shook Emma's health. Madame Bovary was saved from gloomy depression by her husband. Charles took his wife to Rouen for an opera tenor concert. Listening to romantic songs, the beauty came to life again, but an unexpected meeting finally brought the heroine back to life.

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While walking during intermission, the Bovary couple met Leon. The matured notary's assistant again aroused forgotten feelings in Emma, and this time nothing interfered with the romance. Now the woman left the dull city every Thursday and came to the hotel in Rouen to be with her lover.

From the emotions and feelings she experienced, Madame Bovary lost her head and stopped monitoring the growing secret expenses. Creditors, who had remained silent for a long time, attacked her. The confused woman first rushed to her lover, but Leon, not known for his courage, simply ran away.

In an attempt to save her reputation, she turns to her former lover, but he does not want to help the beauty out. In a fit of despair, Emma swallows arsenic, which she finds in a nearby pharmacy. After suffering for several days, the heroine dies in the arms of her disgusted husband.

This is the background against which the story of the main character, Madame Bovary, unfolds. The author's attitude towards the heroine is ambivalent. When Flaubert proceeds from an assessment of the environment in which Madame Bovary is suffocating and which Flaubert himself also hates, he sympathizes with her. Emma Bovary, although inconsistently and in her own way, protests against her surroundings: she cannot get along with this world. That is why Flaubert once said: “Bovary is myself.”

But at the same time, the author judges his heroine very strictly. In order to understand this dual assessment, one must turn to the analysis of the image of Emma Bovary.

Emma was brought up in a convent, where girls of average wealth were usually brought up at that time.

In an environment of artificial confinement, she became addicted to reading novels where ideal “Heroes” with a capital “H” acted. In these novels there was only love, lovers, mistresses, pursued ladies falling unconscious in secluded gazebos, postmen who were killed at all stations, horses who were driven at every station, dark forests, heartbreak, oaths, kisses. shuttle in the moonlight, nightingales in the grove; gentlemen, brave as lions and meek as lambs, virtuous beyond all abilities, always beautifully dressed and crying like urns.”

Having read such literature, Emma imagined herself as the heroine of one of these novels. She believed that she would meet her chosen one who would make her happy. She was waiting for a love full of romanticism and mystery.

One day life smiled at her, and one of her dreams seemed to come true. Soon after her marriage, she managed to attend a ball in the castle of a marquis. She had a strong impression on her for the rest of her life. It was a real pleasure for her to remember this. Every morning, waking up, she said: “A week, two weeks or three weeks ago I was there on this day...”

But the life Emma lives turns out to be completely different from her dreams. Family life is very far from her dreams. Her husband is boring and uninteresting; her lovers are vulgar and deceitful; they have nothing in common with the romantic heroes about whom she dreamed so much2.

In the images of both her lovers, Leon and Rodolphe, the real content of the romantic cliches of the “ideal” young man (Leon) and the seductive socialite philanderer (Rodolphe) was revealed. Nevertheless, Flaubert emphasizes Emma's superiority over Leon and Rodolphe - she is sincere in her hobbies and is capable of real passion. But life in a vulgar bourgeois society is such that all its lofty feelings are doomed to destruction and fatally turn into life experiences. Step by step, Flaubert shows the gradual degradation of his heroine: her deceit, quirks, perverted tastes, increasing sensuality, cynicism and all the “deep and hidden depravity almost to the point of incorporeality.”

The desire to escape from the merciless prose for life draws her in more and more. She falls into the clutches of the moneylender Leray.

And when Emma begins to act, all her actions turn out to be a manifestation of the same routine that she rose above in her dreams.

Her whole life rests on deception; lying becomes, as it were, her second nature. She deceives her husband, her lovers deceive her; In search of a way out of her difficult situation, she becomes increasingly confused. She begins to lie even when there is no need for this lie. “If she said she was walking on one side of the street, it was safe to say that she was actually walking on the other side.”3

Where Charles Bovary's wife suffers yet another disaster, the bitterness of disappointment covers her, her desires fall silent; the heroine seems to recede into the background, and the deadening environment comes to the fore. Laconically and very restrainedly, Flaubert tells how inexpressibly sad Emma is. He does not fall into spatial descriptions of the heroine’s mental state, does not analyze it; he makes the things themselves speak. From the sum of the details, a certain general emotional meaning is formed, the coloring of Emma’s colorless existence.

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Madame Bovary in films

In 1949, a film was released based on the novel Madame Bovary. The tagline for the black-and-white film read: “She just wanted it all.” The film was nominated for an Oscar in the category “Best Artistic Work”, but did not receive a statuette. The main role was played by actress Jennifer Jones.

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Mia Wasikowska as Madame Bovary
In 1969, a frank version of the film was released. The film “The Sins of Madame Bovary” demonstrates in detail the love affairs of the wife of the provincial doctor Charles, played by actor Gerhard Riedmann. The main character of the drama was played by Edwige Fenech.

In 1991, a film adaptation of the novel was released by French director Claude Chabrol. The characters and plot points were selected specifically for the leading actress, Isabelle Huppert, for whom Chabrol began working on the film. The resulting film received positive reviews from critics and received numerous film awards.

In 2014, a joint work of the USA, Belgium and Germany was released. The film accurately conveys the original plot of the drama. The role of the confused beauty was played by actress Mia Wasikowska.

Images of Emma Bovary and Charles Bovary in G. Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary (page 2 of 3)

However, here everything was thought through to the end. Flaubert deliberately removes the effects. He does not want to use the usual technique and kill his heroine “at the end of the curtain.” It would be deliberate beauty, it would violate the unyielding prose of life. Flaubert extended his novel further than usual to give this impression of everyday life, this “gloomy grotesque” funeral, with the pharmacist and the priest falling asleep at the coffin, with a cheerful snack upon awakening, with Hippolyte’s new leg, worn especially for the special occasion. Death does not save Madame Bovary: Leray is present at her funeral, and Homais pronounces his phrases. Shortly after her death, Leon marries. Everything goes on as usual, as nothing special happened. Charles's downfall is a continuation of the same ordinary catastrophe. “The same as in life,” - this law forced Flaubert to enclose the tragedy of Emma within the framework of the biography of Charles.

"Madame Bovary" was created by a poet who managed to hide his tears and laugh, but with a laugh that did not make anyone happy. Ridicule and sympathy appeared here in such terrible unity that the reader was amazed and confused. The relationship between Bovary's husband and wife "could be taken seriously, but they are intended as grotesque... I want my third part, full of ridiculous things, to bring tears... Irony does not in any way reduce the pathetism, on the contrary, it enhances it."

With great art, heavily experiencing each scene, Flaubert ridiculed his heroes, taking tragedy to the limit and exposing both sides of the phenomenon in a kind of unity, in the unity of the tragic and the base.

The image of Charles Bovary has undergone some evolution. The first plan shows that it was originally conceived in a more traditional style. A foppish handsome man who seduced a rich widow, but turned out to be her victim, weak-willed and weak, even sensitive, subordinate to his intriguing mother - Charles, apparently, was not intended to evoke sympathy from the reader. Apparently, this was the ordinary husband of a traditional adulterous affair, a husband whose very existence justifies his wife's infidelity. This is the embodiment of insignificance, stupidity and mediocrity. Of course, this is how it is in the final text of the novel. However, something similar to what happened to Emma happens to him. He develops precious qualities that arouse sympathy and even some respect for him - he has unlimited faith in his unfaithful wife and loves her devotedly. His characterization changes already in the second plan. The sensitivity of his nature and his attachment to his native fields are emphasized. The foppiness disappears, and he marries a rich widow no longer out of his own convenience, but at the insistence of his mother. He loves his wife's lover, unaware of their relationship, worries about Emma's health and grieves after her death. In the image of the traditional husband, always funny and unattractive in such cases, the “other side” appears, just like in the image of Emma. But if for Emma this “other side” was negative, then for Charles it turned out to be positive. Thus, that “objectivity” arose, which was supposed to not only more fully depict reality, but also emphasize its tragedy.

In fact, these positive and even touching qualities do not at all change the final meaning of the image. What remains is philistine contentment, mediocrity, the greatest vulgarity of mind and feelings, making Charles the embodiment of provincialism and philistinism and a “cuckold” in potential. He remains in this function until the end, explaining the action and emphasizing its “necessity.”

The basic drawing - husband, wife and lovers - was given in advance. The characters of the lovers were also outlined, who were supposed to be like the husband. But herein lay the difficulty: we had to vary the same situation three times while maintaining the main idea. It was necessary to diversify the characters of the husband and lovers and Emma’s attitude towards them, so as not to repeat themselves and not bore the reader.

Already at the very beginning of his work, Flaubert drew attention to this: “My husband loves his wife almost as much as his lover. These are two mediocrities in the same environment, and nevertheless they need to be differentiated; if this succeeds, then, in my opinion, it will turn out great, since here you have to paint with the same paint and without harsh tones (which would be easier) " .

As the image of the main character evolved from physiology to psychology, the environment and social background against which the action took place also developed. Emma's psychology cannot be understood without circumstances that explain it. The more complex and human the heroine, the deeper and richer her connections with the environment. They are indissoluble. The heroine and the environment form a unity, however, full of sharp and tragic contradictions. The closer Emma is to the environment, the more sharply she is opposed to it. Now Flaubert cannot imagine his plot without a thorough, detailed and broad description of Yonville with all its disgusting patterns. Joeville enters Emma’s life organically and directly, although not all characters take equal part in the development of events.

Flaubert seems to tear away the veil, and behind the vulgar and disgustingly funny bourgeois world an even more terrible reality is revealed. This world is not only funny and disgusting, it is monstrous in its cruelty. Provincial doctors, landowners, merchants and priests find themselves accomplices in a grandiose crime, covered up with words about prosperity and freedom, and the more terrible their peaceful, mold-like existence becomes. The picture of society is complete here. It is represented in all its abysses and in all its disgust. The violent tossing and thrashing of Emma Bovary and the submissive calm of Charles are different sides of this bourgeois reality, this life - death.

But at the same time, the author judges his heroine very strictly. In order to understand this dual assessment, one must turn to the analysis of the image of Emma Bovary.

Emma was brought up in a convent, where girls of average wealth were usually brought up at that time.

The desire to escape from the merciless prose for life draws her in more and more. She falls into the clutches of the moneylender Leray.

And when Emma begins to act, all her actions turn out to be a manifestation of the same routine that she rose above in her dreams.

In periods of despair, dull and hopeless suffering, the veil of vulgarity that envelops her aspirations seems to fall away. All that remains is a deep, organic rejection of the environment, which is truly dull and joyless. The true reasons for the heroine's everyday drama are revealed, and the ugliness of the provincial environment and the sincerity of the suffering that stand out from her surroundings become obvious. That is why Flaubert could say: “Madame Bovary is me.”

Interesting Facts

Flaubert described the death of the main character in such detail that he became a target for cynical illustrations. The writer was caricatured as a scientist examining Emma's heart.

Despite the obvious similarity of the plot with the tragic events in the Delamar family, the author denied this influence on the story of the creation of the character Emma.
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev became a big fan of the novel, who called Madame Bovary “the best thing that happened to the literary world.”