Name Delphine Delamare | ||
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Died 1848, Ry, Seine-Maritime, France | ||
Gustave Flaubert’ Madame Bovary - Why Married Women Get Bored?
Veronique Delphine Delamare (1822 – 8 March 1848), born Couturier, was a French housewife who took numerous lovers and later committed suicide. She was said to have been the inspiration for Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
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Biography
Delamare was the daughter of a wealthy land owner. She married an unexciting country doctor, and being bored, she took various lovers. She committed suicide by taking prussic acid (known today as hydrogen cyanide).
An 1848 article in the 'Journal de Rouen' in 1848 told about Doctor Delamare's wife's death in the village of Ry near Rouen, where the house of the Delamares and the tombstone of Delphine Delamare are still to be seen.
Delamare's adulterous affairs, debts, and suicide were the inspiration for the character of Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary in 1857. Her husband, Eugéne Delamare, had been a medical student of Flaubert's father.