

After a short while, she begins an affair with a landowner by the name of Rodolphe, and when he refuses to run away with her, she tries again to secure a whimsical life with Léon, an old acquaintance. The main character, Emma, marries a respectable doctor with whom she grows bored after diving into the rich worlds contained in her romance novels. The novel looks at a variety of themes, from materialism to adultery, but at its core, it is an exploration of women and their relationship with fiction. In 1856, Flaubert published Madame Bovary, a transformative piece of literature that was so controversial upon its publication in France that Flaubert went to trial over it. But that is not the only lesson contained in Flaubert’s work, and far from the most important. Flaubert is known for spearheading literary realism in France, and his journey through different schools of thought is documented in the four different versions of La Tentation de Saint Antoine, in which he eventually comes to see the conflict between science and religion is false, a lesson the average Westerner could use today. He lived a charmed life that initially had him on track to become an attorney, but after being diagnosed with epilepsy, he had no choice but to abandon his law career in favor of a literary one, which led him to pursue a life as a novelist.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.French novelist Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen, France in 1821. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.


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