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THE WOODEN LEG
RY-SUR-ANDELLE, in Normandy, has one claim to fame: it has been described as a possible model for the fictional village of Yonville-l'Abbaye in Gustave Flaubert's celebrated 1857 novel of adultery and provincial life, Madame Bovary. Both Ry-sur-Andelle (in real life) and Yonville-l'Abbaye (in fiction) are about ten miles east of Rouen, between the road to Abbeville to the north and the road to Beauvais to the south. A small tributary of the Andelle river runs through the real village and the fictional one. Ry and Yonville-l'Abbaye boast one main street, aptly named La Grande Rue, which runs the length of a rifle shot (Flaubert's words). Believing these facts to be sufficient evidence, the local authorities in Ry have made every effort to capitalize on the miseries of Emma Bovary and her husband, doctor Charles Bovary, and to attract literary pilgrims. They refer to their town as "Le Village de Madame Bovary." Storefronts bear names such as Le Marché d'Emma (delicatessen) or simply Emma (haberdashery, cosmetics, leather goods). The local restaurant is known as La Mélodie du Bovary. The main tourist attraction in Ry is a Musée des Automates, where tiny mechanical figures dressed in period clothing reenact famous scenes from Flaubert's novel, including the once censored passage in which Emma and her lover Léon Dupuis consummate their affair in a moving carriage. (The curtains of the miniature carriage remain hermetically sealed.) Eugène Delamare, the doctor rumored to be the prototype of Emma Bovary's husband, Charles, is buried by the front gate of the church, his tombstone prominently displayed. His wife, Delphine Couturier, whose notorious affairs and suicide by cyanide created a scandal in 1840s France, lies next to her husband. Local legend has it that her tombstone was once shattered into pieces by Flaubert fans who wanted to keep tangible mementoes of the "original" Emma Bovary.
The fictional pharmacist of Yonville-l'Abbaye, Monsieur Homais, has also become a celebrity in the French literary pantheon. In the novel, Monsieur Homais befriends the Bovarys mostly out of self-interest, as a cover for his unlicensed practice of medicine. He is also memorable for his worship of progress and science, his hatred of the Catholic Church, and the unsolicited advice he freely dispenses all around him,...