Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Blind Beggar
A picture of physical decay, the blind beggar who follows
the carriage in which Emma rides to meet Leon also symbolizes Emma’s moral
corruption. He sings songs about “birds and sunshine and green leaves”
in a voice “like an inarticulate lament of some vague despair.”
This coupling of innocence with disease relates to the combination
of beauty and corruption that Emma herself has become. While her
words, appearance, and fantasies are those of an innocent and beautiful
wife, her spirit becomes foul and corrupt as she indulges herself
in adulterous temptations and the deceptions required to maintain
her illicit affairs. Later, when Emma dies, the blind man gets to
the end of his song about a young girl dreaming. We then discover
that what we thought was a song about an innocent woman is actually
a bawdy, sexual song. This progression from innocence to sexual
degradation mirrors the path of Emma’s life.
Dried Flowers
When Emma comes home with Charles, she notices his dead
wife’s wedding bouquet in the bedroom and wonders what will happen
to her own bouquet when she dies. Later, when they move to Yonville, she
burns her own bouquet as a gesture of defiance against her unhappy
marriage. The dried bouquet stands for disappointed hopes, and for
the new promise of a wedding day turned sour and old. In another
sense, Emma’s burning of her bouquet foreshadows the way her desires
will consume her youth and, eventually, her life.
The Lathe
Binet’s habit of making useless napkin rings on his lathe
is a symbol with several meanings. First, it represents the useless,
nonproductive, ornamental character of bourgeois tastes. Second,
it represents something more ominous—the monotony of the life that
traps Emma. In the scene in which she contemplates throwing herself
out the window, Emma hears the sound of the lathe calling her to
suicide. Finally, the lathe represents the craftsman repeatedly
making a simple, uniform work of art. Flaubert once compared himself
as a writer to a craftsman working on a lathe.
