Further assessing the sensational potential of Madame Bovary, two factors speak in its
favour: the famous trial and Flaubert's own stated aspirations about his writing.
In January 1857, soon after the publication of Madame Bovary in La Revue de
Paris, Flaubert was hauled to court by the police, accused
of obscenity. The novel was "an affront to decent comportment and
religious morality," or as www.madamebovary.com puts it, "the novel
challenged public mores, blasphemed against the Church by trying to justify the
mortal sin of adultery, and included provocative images intermingled with religious
affairs, therefore promoting the concept of a fictional utopia devoid of
decency and moral values." Crucially, Madame
Bovary depicted Emma as enjoying her infidelity. Flaubert's novel, Ernest
Pinard, the Imperial Prosecutor argued, would drive its female readers to
adultery, liberating them to do whatever they wanted. This was a dangerous,
novel oozing with corruption.
Flaubert could not see anything offensive in his novel. And
the published version had already been censored by the editor of La Revue de Paris. The outrageous scene
of Emma consummating her affair with Leon during the long cab ride in Rouen
(Part III, Chapter 1) had been left out. The trial turned out to be an excellent
publicity stunt. It has been said that Flaubert enjoyed it and pretty much
brought it about as he publicized his work by complaining about La Revue's censorship.
Flaubert was acquitted 7 February, 1857, after a plea by
Marie-Antoine Jules Senard (a lawyer, politician and a family friend to whom
the novel is dedicated) arguing that the character flaws so evident in Emma
Bovary, together with her unhappiness and miserable end, quite to the contrary,
work to confirm and support moral values. Madame
Bovary was published in book form in April 1857. During the trial Ernest
Pinard had been very impressed by Flaubert's writing, and he went on to pen
pornographic poems. Is this evidence of Madame
Bovary's corrupting power? (This detail comes from "In Our Time" episode on Madame Bovary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thu 12 July 2007 and available on the internet.)
In her review of the novel in The Guardian (27 July 2002) A. S Byatt refers to Flaubert's letter
to his lover Louise Colet (Flaubert's love letters to her are famous and often
plagiarized by less creative lovers): "he wanted to make the reader feel his
world 'almost physically'..." Flaubert also said that Madame Bovary was "a novel about nothing." This has been
interpreted to mean that the story and the moral message were not what
interested him in this work; the novel was an exercise in style and skill of
writing. He could take the most boring topic - a country doctor and his
adulterous wife - a petty bourgeois tragedy so common and tedious they are thirteen to a dozen - and turn it into a narrative so great and
powerful that it would make the audience gasp and tremble, call the police and drag
the author to court.
A trial for obscenity shows that the novel certainly lit a
fire under some trouser-seats. Flaubert's primary aspiration to write in order to affect his
readers and to give them 'almost' physical sensations, rather than to make a
political or a moral point with his narrative, suggests that he aimed for
something literally sensational.
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