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Madame Bovary (1856) is Gustave
Flaubert's first published novel and is
considered by many critics to be a masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's
wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in
order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the
basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its
details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed
always to be searching for le mot juste the
precise word.
When it was first serialized in La Revue de
Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, the novel was attacked for
obscenity by public prosecutors. The resulting trial, held in January 1857,
made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame
Bovary became a bestseller when it was published as a single volume in April
1857. Flaubert's masterpiece is now considered a seminal work of Realism and
one of the most influential novels ever written. In fact, the notable
British-American critic James Wood writes in How Fiction Works: "Flaubert
established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist
narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible
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