5/31/2023 0 Comments Madame bovary flaubert![]() ![]() Despite his private views of artistic freedom, he did not agitate against the laws under which he was prosecuted. Instead, he insisted his book was moral and that he was too bourgeois to be prosecuted. ![]() ![]() Despite Flaubert’s refusal to alter the book’s content, says Haynes, he did not protest what amounted to government censorship of his book. But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. These legal norms-themselves relics of pre-revolutionary guild codes-were accepted by authors of the day. Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. Authors, printers, and publishers were expected to serve as moral “sentinels,” notes Haynes, and licenses to print required businesspeople to swear they would control content. That subject matter and Flaubert’s refusal to temper it with moral messages were at the heart of the obscenity trial, as were evolving norms in terms of publication and press freedom in France. Though his publisher did dial down a few passages, the author angrily insisted that a disclaimer appear along with the book, which in turn alerted the authorities to its incendiary content. The book hardly reads as scandalous today, but its depiction of a bored housewife who embarks on a life of infidelity was nothing less than revolutionary 200 years ago. Were Flaubert and his contemporaries afraid to stand up to censorship?įlaubert’s refusal to tone down the sexual passages of his book appears to have been his legal downfall. ![]()
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