The government of Emperor Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (whom the exiled Victor Hugo ridiculed as "Napoléon le petit," which could be construed either as "the petty Napoleon" or "the small Napoleon") intended to set a moral tone. Thus it sought to assert its legitimacy as the regime of Moral Order and treated perceived affronts to tradition and social stability as challenges to be pursued and repressed. Art, still intended to serve a moral function in the conservative mind, should condemn adulterous conduct such as Emma Bovary's, yet nowhere did this novel condemn it--"pas une larme, pas un soupir de Madeleine sur son crime d'incrédulité, sur son suicide, sur ses adultères" (not a tear, not one sigh of a repentant Magdalene for her crime of incredulity, for her suicide, for her adulteries).
Poor Emma was no better than a whorish "Messalina." And all was Flaubert's fault, for having indulged in realism. Here was the artistic shibboleth of the age! Even though Flaubert was eventually acquitted of all charges--more fortunate he than the great poet of Les Fleurs du Mal (1857; translated as Flowers of Evil, 1909), Charles Baudelaire, who was found guilty of similar charges later in the same year--the judge felt it his duty not to discharge Flaubert without a stern lecture on the excesses of realism, a realism that he deplored as both "vulgaire et souvent choquant" (vulgar and often shocking).
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