Setting
The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert's realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma.
It has been calculated that the novel begins in October 1827 and ends in August 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interpreted as social criticism.
Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “literary realism”.
Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma's romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.
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