“Doesn’t this conspiracy of society revolt
you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn?”
See Important Quotations Explained
Summary: Chapter VII
After Leon’s departure, Emma lapses into her old depression.
She is moody, irritable, nervous, and miserable. She constantly
dreams of Leon, and wishes that she would have given in to her love
for him. In this state, she meets a rich and handsome landowner
named Rodolphe Boulanger, who brings a servant to be treated by
Charles. During the treatment, Justin, Homais’s assistant who is
infatuated with Emma, faints from the sight of the blood. As Emma
tends to him, Rodolphe is taken by her beauty and begins plotting
to seduce her.
Summary: Chapter VIII
Yonville is astir with excitement for the annual agricultural
fair, a festive, merry event featuring animals on display, speeches,
and prizes. One of the prizes goes to an old and timid woman, Catherine Leroux,
for fifty-four years of service on the same farm. Rodolphe takes
Emma inside the empty town hall to watch the ceremony from the window;
when they are alone, he confesses his love for her. The representative
of the local prefect arrives and gives a speech about public morality.
Rodolphe continues to speak of his love and to urge Emma to return
his feelings. She tries to act as she thinks is proper for a married
woman but can’t resist intertwining her fingers with his.
Summary: Chapter IX
For six weeks, Rodolphe avoids Emma, calculating that
his absence will make her long for him. When he visits her at last,
she is cold to him, but quickly finds herself moved by his romantic
language. When Charles arrives, Rodolphe offers to loan Emma a horse
to ride. She demurs, but Charles later persuades her to accept the
offer. Soon afterward, Emma and Rodolphe go for a ride together.
In a beautiful forest glade, he again speaks of his love for her.
At last, she gives in, and they make love. When she returns home,
she is joyful, feeling that her life has at last become romantic.
Emma and Rodolphe quickly begin a full-fledged affair; Emma begins
sneaking away from home to see Rodolphe. She acts incautiously,
neglecting her duties at home in her obsession for her new lover.
Analysis: Part Two, Chapters VII–IX
Like the wedding in Part One, Chapter IV, the agricultural
fair -realistically portrays country life and emphasizes Emma’s
unhappiness. The farmers at the fair counter Emma’s yearning and
dissatisfaction with contentment. They experience the fair not as
a frivolous provincial charade, but as a genuinely enjoyable occasion. In
this regard, Catherine Leroux represents Emma’s opposite. Unlike
Emma, who can’t reside in the same place for more than a week without
experiencing a crippling longing for romantic transformation, Catherine
Leroux has served for fifty-four years on the same farm.
As a suitor, Rodolphe differs from Leon in terms of experience, and
his seduction of Emma succeeds on the strength of his time-honed
cunning. While both suitors are fundamentally motivated by erotic
desire, Leon is shy, sentimentally romantic, and sexually innocent.
In contrast, Rodolphe is aggressive, calculatingly pragmatic, and
sexually cynical. Whereas Leon regards Emma as a potential partner
in a love of equal terms and views her marriage as an obstacle to
that bond, Rodolphe views Emma as sexual prey and her marriage as
a convenient excuse for seduction without worry of commitment. Rodolphe
infers immediately that Emma yearns to escape the yoke of her marriage
and desires a lover. He sets about becoming that lover with ruthless
precision.
The context of the fair provides sharp ironic contrast
to Rodolphe’s skillful seduction of the sentimental Emma. Flaubert
cuts back and forth between the scene of the seduction and the speech
on morality delivered by the bureaucratic official at the fair.
In every instance, the official’s pompous words emphasize the insincere
passion Rodolphe displays toward Emma. When he tells her he loves her,
for example, the official presents a local farmer the award for first
prize in manure. As the scene continues, Flaubert heightens the pace
by including shorter and shorter segments from each speech, until
we hear single sentences intercut with each other.
The irony of public morality contrasted with clandestine
infidelity occurs again in Charles’s unwitting facilitation of Rodolphe’s seduction
of his wife. When Rodolphe offers to take her riding, Emma first
demurs. But Charles, blind to Rodolphe’s intentions and hoping to
improve Emma’s health with exercise, insists she accept. He even
writes to Rodolphe himself to arrange the ride. On the ride, of
course, Emma gives herself to Rodolphe for the first time, and Charles
becomes the unwitting accomplice to his wife’s infidelity.
When Flaubert employs high lyricism to describe Emma
as she strides across fields at midnight to rendezvous with her
lover, she suddenly becomes a sympathetic character. Emma believes
herself to be in love, and her pretensions toward high society recede.
It’s hard to tell, however, whether her sentimental feelings of
love are real or a mere function of Rodolphe’s manipulations and
higher social status. Emma appears to be ignited with real passion,
but we know from her earlier attempts at religious and maternal
love that she is rarely serious for long. We also know that Rodolphe
is an experienced lover who tosses women aside as soon as he grows bored.
This foreshadowing indicates to us that Emma is doomed in this affair,
and we sympathize with her approaching disappointment rather than
her present elation.
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