Gustave Flaubert's Framework

At Croisset, where he wrote Madame Bovary in his mother's house, Flaubert's days were as unvaried as a cuckoo's notes. A man of nocturnal habits, he woke at ten and announced it with his bell cord; only then could the household speak above a whisper. A hot bath and a long toilette followed. At eleven he ate lightly, since he could not work on a full stomach: eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit and a cup of cold chocolate. He told Louise Colet in 1852 that he worked from one in the afternoon until one at night; from 1853 an hour of each afternoon went first to teaching his niece. Dinner ran from seven to nine, then the pavilion at dusk, then back to the round writing table. His maxim, be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work, is the chart's epigraph. The week is a seven-hour night from three, ten and a half hours of creative work in two sittings, and family in the gaps.