She hoped for a son; he would be strong
and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child
was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary: Chapter I
Part Two begins with a description of Yonville-l’Abbaye,
the town to which the Bovarys are moving. The most notable features
of the town are the Lion d’Or inn, the pharmacy of Monsieur Homais,
and the graveyard, where the gravedigger, Lestiboudois, also grows potatoes.
The village folk await the arrival of the evening coach. It arrives
late, carrying Charles and Emma. The delay has occured because Emma’s
little dog escaped and ran away during the journey.
Summary: Chapter II
Charles’s correspondent in Yonville, a pompous, obnoxious
apothecary named Homais, dines at the inn with the newly arrived
Bovarys. His boarder, a young law clerk named Leon, is invited to
join them. While Charles and Homais discuss medicine, Emma and Leon spend
much of the meal discovering their affinities. Emma learns that
Leon also loves romantic novels and lofty ideals. Sharing these leanings,
the two feel an immediate closeness and believe that their conversation
is quite profound. When the Bovarys arrive at their new house, Emma
hopes that her life will change for the better, and that her unhappiness
will finally subside.
Summary: Chapter III
Leon thinks about Emma constantly. Charles’s medical practice
gets off to a slow start, but Charles is excited about the coming
of the baby. Finally, the baby is born. It is a girl, contrary to
Emma’s wishes. They name her Berthe, and Charles’s parents stay
with them for a month after the christening party. One day, Emma
decides to visit the baby at the house of her wet nurse, who asks
her for a few extra amenities. On the way there, Emma feels weak,
so she asks Leon to accompany her. Rumors begin to spread through
the village that they are having an affair. After the visit to the
nurse’s house, Emma and Leon go for a walk by the river, during
which they feel passionately romantic toward each other.
Analysis: Part Two, Chapters I–III
The superficiality of Emma’s romanticism becomes clear
in her interactions with Leon, who shares her love for sentiment
and passionate excess. Emma’s conversation with Leon at dinner is
trite and sentimental—they discuss how books transport them away
from their everyday lives—but to the two of them, it seems rapturous
and meaningful. She challenges her stable but unsatisfying marriage with
a relationship that is based on falsely profound declarations rather
than true sentiment.
The birth of Emma’s daughter underlines the materialism
of her sentiments, but it also introduces some of the novel’s feminist
arguments. Emma desires to be a maternal figure only when it seems
as though the role might be glamorous. As soon as she realizes that
she can’t buy expensive clothes and furniture for the baby, however,
her interest fades, and we see that her only interest in the child
is as a vehicle for her own desires. Emma dreams of having a son
because she believes that a male child will have the power she lacks.
This frank statement shows that Flaubert was aware and perhaps disapproved
of the abridged liberties afforded to women in the late nineteenth
century. Emma observes that “a man, at least, is free; he can explore
all passions and all countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the
most distant pleasures. But a woman is always hampered.” Emma’s
lovers always enjoy freedom that she cannot.
Flaubert’s description of the mundane world around Emma
is realistic, but somewhat exaggerated. He uses flowery, poetic
language to describe Yonville, writing that “the country is like
a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a
fringe of silver.” But Flaubert also recognizes the banality of
the setting as “a mongrel land whose language, like its landscape,
is without accent or character.” By describing the same scene in
contrasting ways, Flaubert accomplishes two effects. First, he sets
himself apart from his romantic predecessors, who would have appraised
a dull scene as unworthy of their attention. Second, he contrasts
the banality that Emma sees with the beauty that an outsider might
instead perceive. Flaubert thereby establishes that while Emma may
be right about the boredom of village life, she is also missing
a layer of beauty that her perspective is too narrow to contain.
