The fire was out, the clock went on ticking,
and Emma vaguely wondered at this calm of all things while within herself
there was such a tumult.
See Important Quotations Explained
Summary: Chapter IV
During the winter, the Bovarys often go to Homais’s house
on Sunday evenings. Here, Emma and Leon develop a strong rapport.
Each feels powerfully attracted to the other, but neither has the
courage to admit to the feeling. They exchange little gifts, and
the townspeople are sure they are lovers.
Summary: Chapter V
Emma watches Leon, Homais, and Charles and decides that
her husband is so unremarkable that he disgusts her. She realizes
that Leon loves her, and the next time they meet, they both are
shy and awkward, unsure of how to proceed. Emma is constantly nervous, and
she begins to lose weight. She fancies herself a martyr, unable
to give herself to love because of the restrictions of her marriage.
She plays the part of the dutiful wife to Charles and brings her
daughter, Berthe, back home from the wet nurse. Soon, however, Emma’s desire
for Leon becomes much stronger than her desire to be virtuous, and
she gives way to self-pity. She breaks down in tears, and blames
Charles for all of her unhappiness. One day, a shopkeeper named
Monsieur Lheureux hints to her that he is a moneylender, in case
she should ever need a loan.
Summary: Chapter VI
Emma hears the church bells tolling and decides to seek
help at the church. The curate, Abbé Bournisien, preoccupied with
his own problems and with a group of unruly boys in his catechism
class, is oblivious to Emma’s deep distress. Soon afterward, in
a fit of irritability, Emma pushes Berthe away from her, and the
little girl falls and cuts herself. Emma claims that Berthe was
playing and that she fell accidentally. Emma is frantic and shaken,
but Charles eventually calms her.
Leon decides to go to Paris to study law. He loves Emma,
but her sentiments make their romance impossible, and he is utterly
bored in Yonville. He is also tempted by romantic adventures he
suspects will await him in Paris. When he bids Emma farewell, they
are both awkward and quiet, but they are both moved. After he leaves, Charles
and Homais discuss the lures and difficulties of city life.
Analysis: Part Two, Chapters IV–VI
At the conclusion of Part Two, Chapter IV, we learn more
about Leon’s feelings for Emma. We discover that he feels shame
at his cowardice in not declaring his love for her, that he has
written and torn-up a number of love letters, and that he feels
frustration that Emma is married. The narrative then shifts to Emma,
in contemplation of love:
As for Emma, she did not ask herself whether
she loved him. Love, she thought must come suddenly, with great
outbursts and lightnings,—a hurricane of the skies, which sweeps
down on life, upsets everything, uproots the will like a leaf and carries
away the heart as in an abyss. She did not know that on the terrace
of houses the rain makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she
would thus have remained safe in her ignorance when she suddenly
discovered a rent in the wall.
Flaubert satirizes the romantic idea of love as an overwhelming transformative
force of nature by juxtaposing images of hurricanes and tempests
with one of the more mundane effects of weather, water damage. By
presenting her discovery of the dent in the wall in an ironic tone
of regret, he mocks Emma’s lack of practical knowledge, as well
as her inability and unwillingness to conceive of the actual. Emma’s
conflict is contained in this passage. She yearns for unreal romantic
ideals and is at first ignorant of and then disappointed by the
imperfect realities of life, such as decay.
Emma’s struggle with her conscience, as she tries to
do her best to become a dutiful wife and mother even as she is tempted
by a romance with Leon, ultimately amounts to her indulgence of
the romantic role of the martyr. But when she shoves her infant
daughter away from her in a fit of annoyance, she can no longer
pretend to be a dutiful family woman. She is saved from an infidelity
with Leon only by his decision to leave for Paris. The incident
with Berthe demonstrates Emma’s inability to embrace maternal instincts.
Just before she pushes her daughter, she stares at her with disgust, regarding
her more as a foreign object—a piece of furniture or an animal—than
as her own child.
The conversation between Emma and the priest offers Flaubert
a chance to poke fun at the superficial nature of religion among
the bourgeoisie. When Emma turns to the priest, she is in real need
of help. But the Abbé Bournisien is preoccupied not with spiritual
matters but with petty banalities: the rowdiness of his pupils and
his daily rounds. When Emma says, “I am suffering,” he misunderstands
her, and assumes that she is referring to the summer heat. The scene
is humorous, but it also criticizes the church sharply, implying that
it can only provide surface comforts and cannot minister to Emma’s
very real spiritual need.
Madame Bovary became so famous in part
because of its innovative narrative technique. Flaubert matches
his prose style to his narrative subject with remarkable accuracy.
When Emma is bored, the text seems to crawl; when she is engaged,
it flies. Flaubert widens the symbolic reach of his novel with the
development of Homais, a character perfectly conceived to represent
all that Flaubert hates about the new bourgeoisie. And he introduces
foreshadowing when the sinister Lheureux hints to Emma that he is
a moneylender.
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