SOURCE: "Victorian Attitudes to Flaubert: An Investigation," in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 16, Nos. 1-2, Fall-Winter, 1987-88, pp. 132-40.

In the following essay, Rouxeville examines elements of critical controversy that surrounded Flaubert's oeuvre during the Victorian era, noting in particular the Victorian rejection of pessimism and an absence of moral purpose in Flaubert's works.

A study of the critical reviews published on Flaubert between 1850 and 1950 reveals that the acceptance of his work in England was slow and difficult.¹ Apart from a few articles published as a result of the Bovary trial, there was little criticism on Flaubert until the seventies. The violent controversies which took place around Flaubert reached a climax in England in the late eighties. This fact is reflected in the periodical literature in which one notes a greater concentration of articles on Flaubert in the late eighties and early nineties, when the critics seemed to attain...