Years of Writing at Croisset
Gustave Flaubert began Madame Bovary in September 1851 and completed the manuscript in spring 1856, working chiefly at Croisset near Rouen. Manuscript information in the 1910 edition records a period from September 1851 to April 1856. The novel was the product of sustained organization, not an improvised record of a single event.
Subtitled Mœurs de province, or provincial manners, the novel places a doctor's household, pharmacy, inn, church, market, and merchants' credit transactions within one social space, creating the density of small-town life through characters' interactions. Its attention extends beyond adultery to the ways an individual's desires are shaped by reading, conversation, commodities, and imagined social status.
References: [1]
Family and Debt Across Three Parts
The novel has three parts, beginning with Charles Bovary's schooldays before recounting his medical practice, widowhood, and marriage to the farmer's daughter Emma. Educated in a convent, Emma forms expectations of love and refined living from romantic books. The conflict between married routine and a brief experience of a grand ball deepens her dissatisfaction. Moving from Tostes to Yonville does not resolve this disappointment.
Parts II and III develop Emma's relationships with Rodolphe and Léon. Meanwhile, the merchant Lheureux sells her goods on credit and manages bills, allowing consumption and borrowing to accumulate into unpayable debt. Romantic promises and financial credit both make the future seem available for immediate use, while consequences are postponed until increasingly dangerous moments. Emma eventually dies by poisoning, Charles later dies as well, and their daughter Berthe is forced to earn a living in a cotton mill. The tragedy's cost continues into the next generation.
References: [1]
Different Forms of Language Expose One Another
The narration often stays close to Emma's feelings without directly declaring them true. A distance separates the romantic scenes she perceives from the mundane realities visible to readers. Characters' clichés, commercial persuasion, and self-justifications enter the narration, requiring readers to judge speakers' positions rather than treating every sentence as the author's opinion.
The agricultural-show chapter interweaves Rodolphe's seduction with officials' prizegiving speeches. Private persuasion and public praise interrupt one another, exposing how two apparently elevated forms of speech rely on stock phrases. At the end, the pharmacist Homais, adept at cultivating his reputation, receives a decoration, creating another discrepancy between social rewards and actual conduct. Such structural arrangements extend the satire beyond blaming Emma alone.
References: [1]
Serialization and Book Publication Were Distinct Stages
The Revue de Paris published the novel in six installments from October 1 to December 15, 1856. Editors requested changes to sensitive scenes, while Flaubert insisted that the work should be read as a whole. The carriage scene was cut from the December 1 installment and several passages from the final one. He demanded a notice alerting readers that what they saw no longer represented the complete design.
In April 1857, Michel Lévy frères issued the first book edition in two volumes. A Ministry of the Interior memorandum dated April 23, published in Leclerc's 2013 article, records that the authorities had forwarded the book to prosecutors on April 17 to reexamine passages omitted from the serial and restored in the volume. This documents post-publication scrutiny; the referral date is not necessarily the release date. The book's publication is therefore placed in April without imposing an exact day.
Another two-volume printing that year bore “Deuxième édition” on its title page and must be distinguished from the first. Piclin's examination of copies more precisely calls it a second impression of the first edition and identifies corrections to spelling, punctuation, and the letter to Senard. This does not mean that two different novels were written in 1857, but neither were all printings that year textually identical.
Prosecution and Acquittal in 1857
On January 29, 1857, Flaubert, periodical manager Laurent-Pichat, and printer Pillet were prosecuted over the novel for offenses against public and religious morality and good morals. Prosecutor Ernest Pinard emphasized sensual description and the mingling of religious language with erotic scenes, asking whether the work lacked a clear voice upholding morality.
Defense lawyer Jules Senard insisted on reading the whole work and argued that Emma's destruction sufficiently demonstrated the consequences of indulging desire. On February 7, the court acquitted the defendants while severely criticizing some descriptions. Its judgment acknowledged the literary labor and overall structure but also insisted that literature observe restraint. Acquittal therefore did not amount to full official endorsement of Flaubert's aesthetic position.
Disagreement in Contemporary Criticism
In his review of May 1857, Sainte-Beuve praised the novel's careful organization and the connections among its parts as evidence of formal control. Pontmartin's June review instead treated it as a symptom of literary decline, explaining Emma through discontent in democratic society and an imbalance of sensation and imagination. These differences went beyond a simple dispute over the plausibility of the plot.
The prosecution brought attention, but contemporary reviews show that circulation cannot be attributed solely to scandal. Readers and critics repeatedly debated whether depicting characters meant endorsing them, whether realistic detail required an explicit moral lesson, and whether the author should pass overt judgment. These debates made Madame Bovary an important case in the relationship between nineteenth-century novelistic form and public morality.