Exactly The Right Word

Writing was not easy for the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Because of his concern for form and precise detail, he often struggled for days searching for “exactly the right word”. He took five years to write Madame Bovary, his best-known work. Flaubert’s goal was to write faultless prose. In Madame Bovary, which tells of Emma Bovary’s revolt against her middle-class environment, Flaubert reveals his own great contempt for the bourgeoisie. This group, he felt, was opposed to art and hated everything that it could not put to use. When Madame Bovary first appeared – in 1856, as a magazine serial – Flaubert was brought to trial for publishing a morally offensive work. He was acquitted in 1857, and in the same year, the novel came out in book form. During his later years, Flaubert spent the winter in Paris, where he held literary gatherings. Flaubert never married, and died on May 8th, 1880.