Modern Women In Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary

In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Flaubert inserted major aspects of his life into the novel. Gustave Flaubert’s plan for Madame Bovary was that the novel was Flaubert’s perception of modern women. He believed that view of modern women was corrupted by society to be perceived as shallow or other false ideals (“Flaubert” 481). Since the view of modern women was corrupted, she cannot follow her true desire of real love (“Flaubert” 481). The view of modern women “would combine in one transcendent experience the fullest physical experiences with the richest spiritual ones” (“Gustave Flaubert” 481). Madame Bovary has connected the path of Flaubert’s “romanticism and realism, and his art arises out of the conflict within his mind and temperament

Gustave Flaubert spent seven hours a day, completing only about twenty pages a month (Weiss). Because Flaubert worked hard on every word, each page took approximately five days to write (Weiss). Gustave Flaubert slaved himself to Madame Bovary to ensure that the novel drew his vision (Weiss). Since Gustave Flaubert spent an extraordinary amount of time working on Madame Bovary, he “greatly influenced the development of the modern novel” (Tyler). Flaubert parallels Emma Bovary off himself: “The novel relates dispassionately the story of a young provincial girl whose incurably romantic notions about life and passion lead her to adultery, financial ruin, and suicide. Her yearnings are of a kind with which Flaubert himself had been all too familiar, as is evidenced in his famous remark, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi” (Madame Bovary is myself)” (Tyler). In Gustave Flaubert 's Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert 's aspects of his life such as his family, his childhood and adulthood, and his affairs inspire the work of Madame

Flaubert’s first crush occurred when he was 15 and was a “an older woman, although he did not reveal his feelings to her for 35 years” (“Gustave Flaubert”). Gustave Flaubert based Emma Bovary off of Louise Colet, “Flaubert was an influential editor of her writing and later modeled his best-known fictional character, Madame Bovary, after her” (Martin 10). Louise also had the desire to marry Flaubert when she was “desperate to marry Flaubert but harshly rebuffed, the hot-tempered Colet became resentful and published scathing novelized accounts of her lover while continuing to pursue him” (Martin 10). Louise represents Emma Bovary in the sense that Emma wants to marry Charles even though Charles was already married to Madame Dubuc. When Gustave Flaubert first met Maria, she was “a married woman for whom he harbored a lifelong infatuation and who deeply influenced the character and direction of Sentimental Education” (Olmsted). Maria parallels Charles’s infatuation with Emma Bovary while he resides with Madame Dubuc. Like Emma Bovary, Louise Colet had several affairs and is known for her sexual connections with “some of her famous contemporaries—Abel Villemain, Gustave Flaubert, and Victor Cousin—than for her own writing” (Martin 10). When Emma meets Charles for the first time, she becomes infatuated with him, “When Charles visited the farm, they talked about preparations