" Then: the drama, which Flaubert lived through up close, of the sculptor Pradier, whose wife betrayed him and ruined him financially. Also: the wavering plan to write the life story of an old maid who turns into an ecstatic mystic. The project bears some relation Madame Bovary. Was Emma not a sort of mystic of passion? "

― Jean Améry , Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: A Portrait of a Simple Man