Gustave Flaubert Book summary

 

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in the year 1821, and he stayed in the town for most of his life. One of his neighbors often read him Don Quixote when he was still a child, and so it came about that Flaubert knew Don Quixote by heart even before he could read. He studied law in Paris, but he did not stay long with the course as he dropped out and moved to the small town of Croisset with his mother after his father died. Flaubert did not publish any books until the age of 30, but he spent five years working on his first book. In 1846, began a literary and romantic relationship with Louise Colet, a poet, and he often corresponded with her about his writing process for Madame Bovary, which he wrote between 1846 and 1850.

Flaubert was a thorough realist, and he challenged Romanticism in literature by writing books that focussed on details of everyday life, accepting their dreary aspect as a natural part of human life. Critics marveled at Flaubert’s debut novel, not only for his masterful verse-like prose, but also because of his nearly perfect use of the free indirect discourse narration style. This first novel became a critical success because of a controversial lawsuit that was brought against Flaubert soon after the publication of Madame Bovary. He was being sued for the obscene descriptions of extra-marital affairs in the book, but Flaubert won the lawsuit and Madame Bovary became an extremely popular book.