Madame Bovary and the Trial of Flaubert

Flaubert's portrait of an adulteress who seeks freedom from a prosaic, disappointing life and ultimately is destroyed by her selfishness was considered scandalous when it was published. Flaubert chose his subject to illustrate his belief that any aspect of life, however trivial or vulgar, could be a subject for literature, and could be raised to the status of art by the quality of the writing.