Artistic License in Madame Bovary

Undoubtedly Gustave Flaubert’s most famous novel is Madame Bovary, one of the first works of fiction to focus on the topic of realism. But Madame Bovary’s fame first came from its censorship trial in 1856, where it was condemned as pornographic. Both the publisher and the printer were charged with disregard for public morality and religion. These men pleaded with Flaubert to cut out some of the more sexual descriptions and the gruesome clubfoot surgery episode. Flaubert would not hear of it, as these controversial descriptions were not the aims and themes of his four-year labor. As people have done throughout time, they read the novel to see why it was so terrible and from there many, more sophisticated criticisms appeared.
Today the novel is read in many high school and college classrooms, and the students, as have readers since the novel’s first publication, dislike it for another reason, Emma Bovary. Being the protagonist of the novel, Emma is the center of the mult...