Madame Bovary Author French Novelist

Madame Bovary author, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), is the French novelist of the realist school. Flaubert worked in this novel from September 1851 to April 1856. The novel gained its ill reputation after the French government charged the author with vulgarism and stopped his publication. However, the charges and the banning soon were uplifted and the book gained its fame. The novel deals with the story of adultery and unhappy love affair of the provincial wife Emma Bovary. The writer combined a feeling for the paragons during the romantic era.

Gustave Flaubert was born on 12th December, 1821 in Rouen, France; he lived with his family in an apartment in the hospital. There his father served as a chief surgeon and a professor. Due to the exposed pain and suffering at the hospital his childhood was gloomy and unhealthy which is very much clear through his works. Madame Bovary author began his writing in his childhood only. By the year 1832 the author completed two works, the juvenile La Belle Explication de la Fameuse Constipation and the serious-minded Eloge de Corneille.

Flaubert at the age of 15 won a prize for an essay in mushrooms which was an imitated one. These dashing hopes led to the beginning of his love life with Elisa Schlesinger who was 10 years older to him. Elisa inspired him to a great extent; the author completed his studies from Paris in private. Flaubert studied law in Paris but a nervous, probably epilepsy; however his treatment led to his failure in the law exams. The Madame Bovary author after this incident changed his mind and devoted him to literature.

Flaubert had few close friends besides that he also had unusual relation with two women. These two women were his wife Elisa Schlessinger whom he married and Louise Colet. Elisa Schlessinger was an object of platonic love for the Madame Bovary author but Louise Colet, the poet was his mistress from 1846 to 1854. Both of them hardly met each other but they kept contact through letter.

The author has often been referred as the cynical hermit and was well known for his negative attitude and morbidity. The writer was often bitter and suffered from depression which may be due to his relationships with the Louis or Elisa or may be due to the gloomy atmosphere which he had experienced in his childhood. Madame Bovary author was one of the most important European writers in the 19th century and with him French novel gained fame and reached a high position.

The main works of the Madame Bovary author included Salammbo (1862), a weighty historical novel about the war between Rome and Carthage; and The Temptation of St. Anthony (1874), a rich and evocative series of religious tableaux. In 1877, he published Three Tales, which contains the beautiful short stories, A Simple Heart, The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitalier, and Herodias and A Sentimental Education (1869), a novel dealing again with the theme of the frustrations of middle-class life and human aspirations. His last novel was Bouvard and Pechuhet.Answers