For me Gustave Flaubert is, first of all, a master of a realistic novel and a merciless critic of his contemporary bourgeois society. French bourgeois literary criticism tends to obscure Flaubert's criticism of his artistry. I want to emphasize that the critical realism of the writer is one of the most valuable features of his artistic heritage.
Based on this, we can say that critical realism depicts the attitude of man and the environment. Human character is revealed in organic connection with social circumstances. The subject of deep social analysis was the inner world of man, critical realism therefore simultaneously becomes psychological. In the preparation of this quality of realism played an important role romanticism, who sought to penetrate the secrets of the human mind.
The deepening of knowledge of life and the complexity of the picture of the world in the critical realism of the 19th century do not mean, however, some absolute superiority over the previous stages, for the development of art is marked not only by conquests, but also by losses. The scale of the Renaissance images was lost. Unique was the pathos of statements, characteristic of the enlightenment, with their optimistic faith in the victory of good over evil.