Henry James and Gustave Flaubert : the creative relationship

Henry James's fascination with France is evident in his writings about France and especially about French authors. He shows a particular, continuing fascination with one French author, Gustave Flaubert, with whom he formed a friendship during his year in France, 1875-1876. The personal relationship between the two novelists was an important one, but the critical relationship was more important, for James wrote six critical essays on Flaubert from 1874 to 1902.

These six essays offer high praise for the work of Flaubert, especially for his style. They also offer one major adverse criticism of Flaubert. In them, James repeatedly states that in two of his novels, Madame Bovary and L'Education Sentimentale, Flaubert created characters who were too limited as reflectors and registers.

A comparison of Madame Bovary with James's The Portrait of a Lady and of L'Education Sentimentale with James's The Princess Casamassima suggests that the critical relationship between James and Flaubert stimulated a creative and a stylistic relationship, that James was influenced in his creation of these novels by his strong approval of Flaubert's style and his strong disapproval of Flaubert's limited central characters.