Flaubert - Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert's Madam Bovary is the sort of text we still need today. Not so much the text itself, but the way the text found the world. Written in the 1850's, the work sensationalised the Parisian public, and finally was put on trial for obscenity. The story tells of the wife of a public servant, who yearns for something more. She meets a cultured soul, who kindles in her a desire that had been safely hidden. The story is one we are very familiar with today, but have difficulty making great, in much the same way it was made great in the 19th century. We do not put books on trial anymore. We put authors on trial, in a sense, through their words. But books themselves are immune from makes them truly important.