Emma was just like any other mistress;
and the charm of novelty, falling down slowly like a dress, exposed
only the eternal monotony of passion, always the same forms and
the same language.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary: Chapter X
Emma and Rodolphe become more cautious, now meeting in
the arbor in Emma’s garden rather than at Rodolphe’s house. Rodolphe quickly
begins to tire of her; he finds her romantic idealism exhausting
and loses interest in her. He continues the affair solely because
of Emma’s beauty, but he urges her to act more cautiously. His attentions
diminish, and she becomes less sure of his love. A letter from her
father prompts a memory of her innocent childhood days. Emma begins
to feel guilty and tries to redeem herself through sacrifice. She
becomes cold to Rodolphe in order to end the affair, and she tries
to force herself to love Charles.
Summary: Chapter XI
Homais reads a paper praising a surgical procedure that
will cure clubfoot. Under pressure from Emma (who hopes to help
Charles’s career), Homais, and much of Yonville, the cautious Charles
agrees to test this procedure on Hippolyte, a clubfooted servant
at the inn. Although Hippolyte is more agile on his crippled leg
than some men are on two healthy ones, he is talked into the operation
by the townspeople. The attempt makes Charles a local celebrity—but
it fails. Hippolyte’s leg develops gangrene and must be amputated. Emma
judges Charles incompetent and feels disgusted by him. Although
her affair with Rodolphe has slowed down considerably, she renews
it now with even more passion than before.
Summary: Chapter XII
Emma and Rodolphe’s affair begins where it left off. As
Emma’s dissatisfaction with her marriage becomes even more pronounced,
she begins to allude to the possibility of leaving Charles. Lheureux,
the merchant and moneylender, begins to coax her into making extravagant
and unwise purchases. She goes into debt to buy expensive gifts
for her lover. Rodolphe, meanwhile, becomes still more easily annoyed
by Emma’s romantic sentimentality and begins to lose patience with
the affair. By now, Emma has been so careless that the whole town
knows about her adultery. When Charles’s mother comes for a visit,
she guesses it too. She and Emma fight, and Charles convinces Emma
to apologize to his mother about the fight. After her apology, Emma
is humiliated and begs Rodolphe to take her away. She plans to take
Berthe with her. With the secret hope of running away with Rodolphe,
she becomes more polite and much less irritable with Charles and
his mother. The lovers finalize their plans. They decide that they
will leave Yonville separately, then meet in Rouen. However, after
a meeting in Emma’s garden, Rodolphe talks himself out of the idea.
Analysis: Part Two, Chapters X–XII
As the affair progresses, it becomes increasingly clear
that Rodolphe is interested in Emma solely for the sexual pleasure
she affords him, and that Emma’s flights of romantic fancy are sorely
misplaced. Emma is never able to remain happy in one situation for
long, and her guilty attempt to reclaim her moral bearing by sacrificing
herself for Charles’s career is simply the particular form her inevitable depression
takes at this point in the story. When Charles characteristically
bungles the operation, having allowed Emma and Homais to talk him
into performing an unsound procedure on the crippled Hippolyte,
Emma rediscovers her disgust for him and returns gladly to Rodolphe’s
arms.
The operation on Hippolyte brings to light not only Charles’s incompetence,
but also the real evil that pride and pretension can perpetrate
on simplicity and innocence. Hippolyte is stupid and simple, but
he is very able. Homais, on the other hand, is the picture of bourgeois
pomposity. He loves to hear himself talk, regardless of the inanity
of what he is saying. Combined with Charles’s incompetence, Homais’s
know-it-all behavior invites the horrifying scourge of gangrene
followed by the gruesome agony of amputation.
The story of Hippolyte can also be seen as an allegory
for Emma’s life. By trying to alter a mediocre marital situation,
Emma will in the end devastate both her family and their finances—much
as the doctors destroy Hippolyte’s leg by trying to correct a condition
that Hippolyte had previously accepted as part of his life. The
nature of that destruction, a long, slow poisoning by gangrene,
is similar to the long path of increasing adultery, immorality,
and financial irresponsibility that Emma has taken.
