Top 10 Outstanding Facts about Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary – Emma Bovary. Photo by Edgar Chahine. Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Outstanding Facts about Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert is a French novelist. He is widely regarded as the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. “In Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality,” writes literary theorist Kornelije Kvas. 

He is best known for his debut novel Madame Bovary, his Correspondence, and his obsessive attention to style and aesthetics. Flaubert’s protégé was the celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant. A group of CNRS researchers published a paper in honor of Flaubert’s 198th birthday (12 December 2019).

1. Mr. Flaubert was born in the Upper Normandy city of Rouen

City of Rouen. Photo by Cyril Aucher. Wikimedia Commons

Flaubert was born in Rouen, in the Upper Normandy department of Seine-Maritime, in northern France. He was the son of Anne Justine Caroline and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, the director and senior surgeon of Rouen’s major hospital. According to some sources, he began writing at the age of eight. 

2. Flaubert attended a real-life ball similar to the one attended by Emma Bovary

Gustave Flaubert. Photo by Nadar. Wikimedia Commons

Emma attends a ball hosted by one of Charles’ patients, the Marquis d’Andervilliers, in one of Madame Bovary’s most memorable chapters. The glittering affair, complete with dancing, fine food, and elite guests, whets Emma’s appetite for a life of luxury. The event was inspired by a real-life dance that Flaubert attended with his parents when he was 14 years old in 1836. The experience, held by a local aristocrat, so impressed Flaubert that he described elements of it in his early short story “Quidquid Volueris” (1837) and in an 1850 letter to a friend.

3. His love letters show his creative process as he wrote Madame Bovary 

Madame Bovary – Emma Bovary. Photo by Edgar Chahine. Wikimedia Commons

Flaubert ended a years-long affair with married poet Louise Colet shortly before the publication of Madame Bovary. Flaubert met Colet in 1846, not long after Caroline, Flaubert’s sister, died in childbirth. The author had commissioned sculptor James Pradier to create a bust in Caroline’s likeness, and Colet was modeling in the artist’s studio when Flaubert arrived with his sister’s death mask.

Flaubert and Colet fell in love and exchanged letters throughout their on-again, off-again relationship. Many of Flaubert’s letters described his creative process while writing Madame Bovary, making the novel’s genesis “one of the best-charted in fiction,” according to literary critic Renee Winegarten—the silver lining in an otherwise acrimonious breakup.

4. Flaubert was not financially successful

Although Flaubert achieved literary fame during his lifetime, he was not financially successful (he earned only 500 francs from the first five years of Madame Bovary sales), and he was hurt by the hostility and misunderstanding of his critics and readers. In 1857, at the height of public hostility, he and the publisher of Madame Bovary were tried for an “offense to public morals and religion.” However, the case was eventually dismissed.

5. Flaubert was widely regarded as a misanthropic loner

Person in black and white hoodie. Photo by Jonathan Cooper. Unsplash

He was marked by morbidity and pessimism, which may have been exacerbated by his illness, as well as a violent hatred and contempt for middle-class society, which stemmed ultimately from his upbringing in bourgeois Rouen. He was frequently bitter and unhappy as a result of the vast disparity between his unattainable dreams and fantasies and the realities of his life; for example, his mystical and idealized love for Elisa harmed all of his subsequent relationships with women. “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” Flaubert’s famous remark, perhaps best expresses his unhappiness and loneliness.

6. Flaubert was forced to drop out of law school due to epilepsy

Epilepsy drugs. Photo by Jarun011. Unsplash

Flaubert suffered from a serious nervous illness in 1844, a diagnosis of epilepsy forced him to drop out of law school, which conveniently provided him with the opportunity to pursue a literary career.

 He retired to the family’s new home in Le Croisset, a Rouen suburb, for health reasons. He gladly relinquished his law practice, and the majority of his time was now spent at Le Croisset, where he lived quietly and devoted himself to writing and studies.

7. Flaubert was a perfectionist by nature

Flaubert published far less frequently than his contemporaries. His painstaking perfectionism is the reason for this. He would spend days, if not weeks, writing a single page. And he was never happy with what he wrote. Gustave worked hard on his writing and refused to use synonyms, instead believing in the principle of always finding the right word. His ultimate goal was stylistic perfection, for which he revised his work numerous times.

8. Flaubert never married

Gustave Flaubert. Photo by Nadar. Wikimedia Commons

Flaubert was never married and had no children. His reasons for not having children are revealed in a letter he wrote to Colet on December 11, 1852. In it, he stated his opposition to childbirth, stating that he would “transmit to no one the aggravations and disgrace of existence.”

In his travel writings, Flaubert was open about his sexual encounters with prostitutes. He suspected a Maronite or Turkish girl had left a chancre on his penis. He also had affairs with male prostitutes in Beirut and Egypt, describing a “pockmarked young rascal wearing a white turban” in one of his letters. 

9. His novel Madam Bovary is regarded as one of his greatest works

Madam Bovary is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written.  Marcel Proust praised Flaubert’s “grammatical purity,” Vladimir Nabokov said that “stylistically it is prose doing what poetry is supposed to do,” and Milan Kundera wrote in the preface to his novel, The Joke, “Ever since Madame Bovary, the art of the novel has been considered equal to the art of poetry.”

10. In Beirut, Flaubert contracted syphilis

Syphilis in block. Photo by AndreyPopov. Unsplash

In 1846, he traveled to Brittany with his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp.  In 1849-50, he traveled to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. He caught syphilis in Beirut. In 1850, he spent five weeks in Istanbul. In 1858, he traveled to Carthage to conduct research for his novel Salammbô.