Orthopédie, gymnastique, hypodermie : redresser le corps chez Flaubert

This chapter examines attempts to 'correct' or 'straighten' the body - implicitly perceived as imperfect - as represented in 'documentary' fictions by three key nineteenth-century French authors: Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and Emile Zola. Along with their contemporary 'source' texts, two episodes from Flaubert are discussed: attempts by the eponymous heroes of Bouvard et Pecuchet to perform exercises prescribed by a contemporary gymnastics manual, and Charles Bovary's vain attempt in Madame Bovary to perform corrective surgery on a club foot, informed by a contemporary medical treatise. Maupassant's novel Mont-Oriol is discussed in relation to what was known in late-nineteenth-century Paris as 'Swedish gymnastics', in which patients were strapped into machines in order to simulate vigorous physical activities such as horse-riding and swimming. Finally, attempts to 'correct the body', 'redresser le corps' in the words of the French historian of the body Georges Vigarello, by means of hypodermic injections, are discussed in relation to Zola's novel Le Docteur Pascal, and a medical treatise on this kind of treatment on which Zola drew. The chapter concludes by arguing that the representation of these kinds of treatments is connected to the question of knowledge, and how it should be organised. Works by authors such as Flaubert and Zola in particular are in fact engaging with attempts in the broader culture to organise, to 'redresser' the body of savoir.