[A]ll the bitterness of life seemed to
be served to her on her plate. . . .
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary: Chapter VII
During her honeymoon in Tostes, Emma feels disappointed
not to be in a romantic chalet in Switzerland. She finds her husband
dull and uninspiring and begins to resent his lack of interest in
a more passionate life. Charles continues to love Emma. His mother
visits and hates Emma for having won his love. After she leaves,
Emma tries to love Charles, but disappointment lingers. She wonders
why she ever got married. Then, one of Charles’s patients, the Marquis d’Andervilliers,
invites the Bovarys to a ball at his mansion.
Summary: Chapter VIII
Although enchanted by the atmosphere of wealth and luxury
at the ball, Emma is embarrassed by her husband, whom she views
as a clumsy, unsophisticated oaf. She is surrounded by wealthy,
elegant noblemen and women, among them an old man who was one of Marie
Antoinette’s lovers. When the ballroom gets too hot, a servant breaks
the windows to let in the air. Emma looks outside and sees peasants
gawking in; she is reminded of her life on the farm, which now feels
a world away. A viscount dances with her, and she feels as though
she has been cheated out of the life for which she was born. On
the way home, the same viscount passes them on the road and drops
a cigar box, which Emma keeps. Back in Tostes, Emma is angry with
everyone around her.
Summary: Chapter IX
Fixated on her cigar case and her fashionable ladies’
magazines, Emma sinks into fantasies of high society life in Paris,
growing despondent and miserable and venting her self-pity by acting
sullen and capricious with her husband. Although Charles’s business
prospers, Emma grows increasingly irritated with his poor manners
and dullness. As her restlessness, boredom, and depression intensify,
she becomes physically ill. In an effort to cure her, Charles decides
that they should move to Yonville, a town in need of a doctor. Before
the move, Emma learns that she is pregnant. While packing, she throws her
dried bridal bouquet into the fire and watches it burn.
Analysis: Part One, Chapters VII–IX
Now that we see the world of the novel fully from Emma’s
perspective, Flaubert begins to develop the basic conflict inherent
in her situation: Emma is unable to accept the world as it is, but
she cannot make the world as she wants it to be. Now that she is
married to a middle-class dullard, she cannot accept her lot. She
steeps herself in fantasy, and the pressure of her constant rebellion
against reality makes her restless, moody, and eventually physically
ill.
Flaubert’s portrayal of the ball and the events that
follow displays the ironic contrast between Emma’s experience and
reality. Flaubert conveys both the external reality of how Emma
looks at the ball as well the psychological reality of how the ball
looks to Emma. She is so happy that she fails to realize that no
one at the ball is paying any attention to her, and her meaningless
dance with the viscount becomes, in her fancy, a tremendous romantic
occurrence. In fact, she continues to overlook the well-meaning
love of her good-natured but vapid husband in favor of her memories
of the ball for weeks after everyone else has already forgotten
it. When Charles decides to move to Yonville in an attempt to salvage
Emma’s failing health, she takes a moment from her packing to throw
her bridal wreath dramatically onto the fire. The event symbolizes
her rejection of the marriage and the complacent middle-class world
that have, to her mind, imprisoned her.
Emma’s prejudiced eyes intensify Flaubert’s realist attention
to detail. In particular, the details of Charles’s oafishness are
greatly magnified. The narrator describes every noise he makes when
he eats. Flaubert also devotes several paragraphs to a description
of Emma’s overwhelmingly boring daily routine. Emma’s boredom becomes
one of the novel’s subjects and a means of developing her character.
Flaubert’s focus on boredom marks another of the novel’s departures
from romanticism toward a realistic mode.
