Flaubert, the man tormented by Madame Bovary

Paris (EFE) .- “They will say that I have only written that!” Madame Bovary, a nineteenth-century masterpiece, was Gustave Flaubert’s greatest nightmare, whose birth is 200 years old this Sunday.

Flaubert (Rouen, 1821), the son of a famous surgeon married to the daughter of a physician, was above all the son of his time. Romanticism marked his adolescence and his first writings, among which there were some travel notebooks and the first sketches of “Sentimental Education”.

But it was in 1856 when, after five years of childbirth, she published “Madame Bovary”, inspired by an event in Normandy.

The fury of the play, starring a young woman from the provinces married to a mediocre and boring doctor who resorts to infidelity and dresses to get out of her depressing routine, earned Flaubert a controversial trial for violating good manners and morals public and religious.

Rereading the documents of the trial, with readings of extracts from the novel and a fierce accusation against the wishes and actions of Emma Bovary, it is surprising to see that the court did not seem to condemn the writer but his fictional character, as revealed in the documentary “The trial of Emma Bovary. The novel of scandal ”, directed by Audrey Gordon.

The justice of the Second French Empire did not appreciate either that the antiheroine committed suicide at the end of the book instead of humiliating herself and asking her husband for forgiveness.

A visceral and deep writing

“My imaginary characters affect me, they persecute me or perhaps I am the one who is in them. When I wrote the poisoning of Emma Bovary I felt so much the taste of arsenic in my mouth that I suffered two indigestions and I vomited all dinner “, wrote the author about the visceral creation of his masterpiece.

Flaubert was released without charge, but, according to the investigations, this was due to the hand of Napoleon III, who intervened on his behalf to prevent the sentence from impacting the following elections.

The trial gave Bovary and its author unprecedented fame and allowed the text to be published in its entirety, including the most carnal scenes, which had also been dismantled before the courts, such as the passage of the chariot.

Already then, Flaubert warned his editors: “If you remove it, you have not noticed anything that is scandalizing, you focus on the details. The entire work would have to be attacked. The brutal element is at the bottom, not on the surface ”.

The shadow of this character, who according to Flaubert existed in droves among the women of the time who were prevented by customs from aspiring to their own destiny, persecuted him until his death in 1880.

His novels and plays were poorly received by critics and his iconic and suicidal female character was always a reason for anguish. and frustration in the career of the writer, eternally condemned to talk about him again.

“It bothered him because he didn’t like Madame Bovary. He didn’t like the character or his story. He loved the novel for aesthetic reasons, but hated the character because it represented more or less everything he hated. A woman who does not accept her condition ”, recently analyzed in France Culture Régis Jauffret, author of“ Le dernier bain de Gustave Flaubert ”.

Influence of cinema and literature

After his precocious death, at the age of 58, his literary strength and social portraits marked future generations, from Guy de Maupassant to the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, who has always recognized the influence and admiration for Flaubert.

In France, the bicentennial is celebrated in 2021 with a series of meetings and cultural events that are organized especially in Normandy, a land of inspiration for the author.

Actress Isabelle Huppert, who played Emma Bovary In the film adaptation of the novel directed by Claude Chabrol in 1991, she is the honorary president of this year of tributes.

“Flaubert’s work, full of modernity, continues to echo in the current public debate: the place of women in society or the freedom of creation. That is why it is essential to revisit his work ”, urges Huppert on this bicentennial, converted, thanks also to Emma Bovary, into a myth of her century.