Gustave Flaubert

Lore & Background

Flaubert was born in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. He was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline (1793–1872) and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. He began writing at an early age, as early as eight according to some sources. He was educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen, and did not leave until 1840, whereupon he went to Paris to study law.

In Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo. Toward the end of 1840, he traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica.

In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned the study of law. His first finished work was November, a novella, which was completed in 1842. In September 1849, Flaubert completed the first version of a novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony. He read the novel aloud to Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Du Camp over the course of four days, not allowing them to interrupt or give any opinions.

At the end of the reading, his friends told him to throw the manuscript in the fire, suggesting instead that he focus on day-to-day life rather than fantastic subjects. In 1850, after returning from Egypt, Flaubert began work on Madame Bovary. The novel, which took five years to write, was serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856. The government brought an action against the publisher and author on the charge of immorality, which was heard during the following year, but both were acquitted.

When Madame Bovary appeared in book form, it met with a warm reception. In 1858, Flaubert travelled to Carthage to gather material for his next novel, Salammbô. The novel was completed in 1862 after four years of work.

Drawing on his youth, Flaubert next wrote L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education), an effort that took seven years. This was his last complete novel, published in the year 1869. In the 1870s, Flaubert wrote an unsuccessful drama, Le Candidat, and he published a reworked version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, portions of which had been published as early as 1857. He devoted much of his time to an ongoing project, Les Deux Cloportes (The Two Woodlice), which later became Bouvard et Pécuchet, breaking the obsessive project only to write the Three Tales between 1875 and 1877.

The Novelist's Arc: From First Draft to Unfinished Masterpiece

Flaubert's literary output spanned four decades yet yielded only a handful of major works. His first finished piece, the novella November, was completed in 1842. In 1849 he produced a first draft of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, which he read aloud over four days to friends Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Du Camp, forbidding any interruption.

They urged him to burn the manuscript and turn to everyday life instead. That counsel shaped Madame Bovary, begun after his return from Egypt in 1850 and taking five years to complete. Serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856, the novel triggered a government prosecution for immorality, but Flaubert and his publisher were acquitted, and the book edition was warmly received. He then spent four years on the historical Salammbô, researching in Carthage in 1858, and seven years on L'Éducation sentimentale, his final complete novel, published in 1869.

The 1870s brought the unsuccessful drama Le Candidat, a reworked Saint Anthony, and the Three Tales. The remainder of his life was consumed by Bouvard et Pécuchet, a satire on the futility of knowledge and the prevalence of mediocrity, which he regarded as his masterpiece. The unfinished novel appeared posthumously in 1881 to a small print run and indifferent reviews.

The Cult of the Right Word

Flaubert's approach to prose was defined by an almost religious devotion to precision. He shunned vagueness, abstraction, and cliché with equal ferocity, and in a letter to George Sand he described his daily labor as an attempt to compose harmonious sentences while avoiding assonances. Central to his method was the pursuit of le mot juste, the single exact word, which he regarded as the essential key to literary excellence. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes spending a week on a single page, never satisfied with what he had written.

In his correspondence he made clear that correct prose did not flow naturally from him; his style was the product of relentless work and revision. He once articulated his ideal: a style rhythmic as verse, precise as scientific language, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame, capable of piercing an idea like a dagger while allowing thought to glide over a smooth surface like a skiff before a favorable wind. He also insisted that an author must be like God in the universe—present everywhere yet visible nowhere. This painstaking discipline meant he published far less than contemporaries such as Balzac or Zola, and Walter Pater dubbed him the martyr of style.

Rouen, Paris, and the Road to Literature

Born on 12 December 1821 in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, Gustave Flaubert was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline Fleuriot and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, who served as director and senior surgeon of the city's major hospital. He reportedly began writing as early as the age of eight. His formal education took place at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen, where he remained until 1840.

He then moved to Paris to study law, but proved an indifferent student and found the capital distasteful. He did make a few notable acquaintances, including Victor Hugo, and toward the end of 1840 he traveled through the Pyrenees and Corsica. In 1846, following an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned his legal studies altogether.

That same year he traveled in Brittany with his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp. A long journey to the Middle East in 1849–50 took him through Greece and Egypt; in Beirut he contracted syphilis, and he spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850. These travels, combined with his early literary experiments, laid the groundwork for the novelist he would become.

A Private Life, a Public Conscience

Flaubert never married and had no children. In an 1852 letter to his companion Louise Colet, with whom he had a relationship from 1846 to 1854, he explained his reasons for not wanting children. After leaving Paris he settled at Croisset, near the Seine and close to Rouen, where he lived for the rest of his days, making only occasional trips to Paris and England, the latter where he apparently maintained a mistress. Politically, he described himself as a romantic and liberal old dunce, an enraged liberal, a hater of all despotism, and a champion of every individual protest against power and monopolies.

His correspondence, prolific over a lifetime, has been collected in several volumes and remains a vital document of his inner life. The celebrated writer Guy de Maupassant was among his protégés. Flaubert died on 8 May 1880, and his unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet was published the following year. He is remembered as the leading exponent of literary realism in France and beyond, and his scrupulous devotion to style continues to influence writers worldwide.

Reader's Guide

Flaubert famously avoided the inexact, the abstract and the vaguely inapt expression, and scrupulously eschewed the cliché. In a letter to George Sand he said that he spent his time 'trying to write harmonious sentences, avoiding assonances'. Flaubert believed in and pursued the principle of finding 'le mot juste' ('the right word'), which he considered as the key means to achieve high quality in literary art. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes occupying a week in the completion of one page, never satisfied with what he had composed.

In Flaubert's correspondence he intimates this, explaining correct prose did not flow out of him and that his style was achieved through work and revision. Flaubert said he wished to forge a style 'that would be rhythmic as verse, precise as the language of the sciences, undulant, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame: a style that would pierce your idea like a dagger, and on which your thought would sail easily ahead over a smooth surface, like a skiff before a good tail wind.' He famously said that 'an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.' This painstaking style of writing is also evident when one compares Flaubert's output over a lifetime to that of his peers (for example Balzac or Zola). Flaubert published much less prolifically than was the norm for his time and never got near the pace of a novel a year, as his peers often achieved during their peaks of activity. Walter Pater famously called Flaubert the 'martyr of style'.