The Real Tragedy

Welcome to the Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary - the real one.

Gustave Flaubert dedicated his 1856 novel to his lifelong friend, Louis Bouihet, who wrote to him in 1851 to ask him whether his next novel would be about Don Juan or Delphine Delamare. In a way, it was both.

The character of Emma is possibly based on Flaubert’s romantic lover, Louis, who was married to Hippolyte Colet, but the events described in the novel bear an uncanny resemblance to the life and demise of another real young woman, Delphine Delamare, whose husband, Eugene, was a failed medical student of Flaubert senior, a renowned physician.

Delphine was a farmer’s daughter who, at the age of seventeen, married Eugene, who, by that time, had become a health officer.

1. Yonville-l’Abbaye is described as a “street with a few stores on either side that stops short at the road bend” and bears a strong resemblance to Ry

2.