Madame Bovary

We were in study hall when the headmaster entered, followed by a new boy dressed in bourgeois clothes—and this new boy was Charles Bovary, a country lad of about fifteen, his red wrists protruding from a jacket that was too tight, wearing an impossible cap, composite and ridiculous, whose mute ugliness possessed depths of expression like the face of an imbecile. There he is, Charles, from the very first page, entangled, stammering his name which the class distorts into an uproar—Charbovari!—and this uproar is like a signal for all that will follow: an entire life spent never quite finding the words, never quite measuring up.

His father, a former assistant surgeon-major reinvented as a failed country gentleman, drank his cider from bottles instead of selling it in casks and greased his hunting boots with the fat of his pigs. His mother, embittered by her husband's infidelities and negligence, had transferred all her shattered vanities onto the child: she envisioned him in public works, in the magistracy. Charles, however, ran in the woods, ate blackberries along the ditches, and grew like an oak. He was sent to school, then to study medicine in Rouen, where he understood nothing of the lectures but accomplished his small daily task like a blinkered mill-horse turning in place. He failed the first time, set back to work, passed, settled in Tostes, and married a widow as dry as a stick who soon died of a hemorrhage—and Charles, faced with her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove, remained lost in a painful reverie until evening. She had loved him, after all.

It was then that he returned to Les Bertaux, to the home of old Rouault, whose broken leg he had set. Emma was there, in the kitchen with its shutters closed, sewing a white cotton stocking, and the daylight streaming down the chimney cast a faint blue over the cold ashes. Charles noticed the whiteness of her nails, the candid boldness of her gaze. He came back, and came back again, loved the barn and the stables, loved old Rouault who clapped him on the hand, loved Emma's little wooden shoes on the washed flagstones. One evening, as night fell, the sky covered in stars, a warm wind blowing past, he said to himself: what if you were to marry, after all! He stammered his proposal in a sunken lane, old Rouault pushed the window shutter wide open against the wall—it was a yes—and the latch was still trembling.

There was a wedding attended by forty-three people, where they sat at the table for sixteen hours, with a fine roasted suckling pig flanked by four sorrel sausages and a tiered cake upon which a little chocolate Cupid swung on a swing between two rosebuds at the very top. Old Rouault accompanied them as far as Vassonville, remembered his own wedding, his wife riding pillion in the snow, and felt as sad as an empty house.

But Emma, barely settled in the house at Tostes with its canary-yellow wallpaper and its Hippocrates-head clock, was already seeking to know what exactly was meant in life by the words felicity, passion, and intoxication, which had seemed so beautiful to her in books. For she had read, at the Ursuline convent, everything romantic and sentimental it was possible to read: keepsakes with engravings of English ladies, novels dealing only in lovers and moonlit skiffs, and Walter Scott had instilled in her a cult of old manors and white-plumed cavaliers. She had dreamed of travels in a post-chaise beneath blue silk blinds, of lemon trees along the shores of gulfs, of villa terraces where one watches the stars with intertwined fingers. But Charles's conversation was as flat as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trudged past in their ordinary dress, arousing no emotion, no laughter, no reverie. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor fire a pistol. She resented him for this firmly seated calm, for this serene heaviness, for the very happiness she gave him.

She would go out with her greyhound, walk as far as the Banneville beech grove, sit on the grass, and repeat to herself: why, my God, did I marry? Ennui, a silent spider, was spinning its web in the shadows in every corner of her heart. Then something extraordinary fell into her life: an invitation to the ball at La Vaubyessard, the home of a marquis. She waltzed there, she caught a glimpse of another world, warm orangeries, old men with drooping lips who had lived at court, and a viscount who smelled of fine tobacco. Upon her return, all of Tostes seemed narrower, more dismal, more final. She bought a map of Paris, subscribed to fashion magazines, stopped eating, suffered from palpitations, coughing fits of blood, and whims. Charles, worried, decided to leave Tostes for Yonville-l'Abbaye, a market town in the Pays de Caux, and Emma, on the day of their departure, threw her bridal bouquet into the fire, where its little cardboard berries popped like percussion caps.

In Yonville, they found their places set at the Lion d'Or inn. Homais, the apothecary, was there, inexhaustible, encyclopedic, vain, dispensing his opinions on medicine, agriculture, and chemistry with an assurance that nothing could dent. The priest, Bournisien, passed by, his hands full of catechism. And there was Léon Dupuis, a notary's clerk, a fair-haired young man with well-kept nails, who was as bored as Emma and shared her love for music, literature, and sunsets over the sea. They saw each other every day, exchanged books, glances, and silences. Léon loved her without daring to say so; Emma did not yet know she loved him. Then Léon, tired of waiting, left for Paris to continue his law studies, and Emma, who had let him go, relapsed into a gloomier, deeper, more dizzying ennui than the first.

It was then that Rodolphe Boulanger de La Huchette appeared, a landowner in his thirties, of brutal temperament and shrewd intelligence, who had had many mistresses and knew women well. He saw Emma, calculated her loneliness, guessed her boredom, and coldly decided to seduce her. He took her to the agricultural show, where, while the prefectural councilor declaimed on manure and the merits of agriculture, Rodolphe murmured novelistic phrases in her ear, and the two speeches mingled in a derisory counterpoint—the merino rams received their prizes while Emma received the first words of passion. Then came the horseback ride in the forest, autumn, yellow leaves, the red sun, and Emma gave herself to him.

For months she lived in the exaltation of adultery, believing she had finally entered that wondrous world of passion she had so long imagined. She bought riding crops and fabrics, sent gifts to Rodolphe, and became imprudent, possessive, devouring. Rodolphe, for his part, was beginning to find the affair cumbersome. When Emma proposed they flee together, abduct little Berthe, and leave for Italy, he drafted a breakup letter—he took his time, searched for the right turns of phrase, even shed a tear upon it for good measure—and placed it at the bottom of a basket of apricots. Emma read it, went up to the attic, saw through the skylight the road where Rodolphe's carriage was disappearing in the dust, and nearly threw herself into the void. She fell ill, brushed with death, and passed through weeks of delirium and prostration while Charles, distraught, kept watch at her bedside and ruined himself on medical consultations.

The convalescence was long, and it was at the theater in Rouen, where Charles took her to distract her, that she found Léon once more. The young man had changed; Paris had sharpened him, he now possessed self-assurance, and this time he did not let the opportunity slip. They met again in the cathedral, climbed into a cab with lowered blinds that crisscrossed Rouen for hours, the driver not daring to stop, and the carriage finally reappeared in a street, with a woman's hand tossing through the slatted blinds small pieces of torn paper that scattered in the wind like white butterflies. Then came the rendezvous in Rouen, every Thursday, at the Hôtel de Boulogne, the lies, the piano lessons invented to justify the absences, and a passion that was initially ardent but gradually became insipid, lapsing into the same habits as marriage, as though adultery, too, had its platitudes.

Meanwhile, the debts were piling up. Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant, cunning, patient, and implacable, had woven around Emma a net of promissory notes, renewals, and compound interest. He had sold her fabrics, carpets, and trinkets, had lent her money, had made her sign IOUs, and now the machine was in motion, inexorable. The bailiffs came; the seizure of her property was pronounced. Emma ran everywhere—to the notary who tried to seduce her, to the tax collector who refused her, to Rodolphe who either did not have the sum or did not want to give it. She begged Léon, who took fright. Closed doors everywhere, humiliation, coldness, and calculation everywhere. She found herself alone, absolutely alone, and there was nothing romantic about this particular solitude.

She entered Homais's pharmacy, slipped into the laboratory, seized the blue jar marked with a skull, plunged her hand into it, raised it to her mouth, and swallowed arsenic. Then she returned home, lay down on her bed, and waited. Death was long and agonizing. The taste of ink rose in her mouth, she vomited, her limbs stiffened, brown patches appeared on her body, and she had one last horrific spasm, a dreadful laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of a blind beggar who had haunted the road to Rouen. Charles, on his knees, wept. The priest recited prayers. Homais, in the next room, pretended to sleep.

The furniture was sold, the creditors were paid, nothing was left. Charles's mother came, quarreled with him, and left again. Little Berthe was sent to an aunt. Charles, alone in the empty house, discovered Rodolphe's and Léon's letters in a secret drawer, and the world collapsed a second time—but he could not hate Emma, he could not even muster indignation; he said only that it was the fault of fatality. One summer day, he sat on the garden bench, beneath the arbor, his head thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, and the locks of his black hair clinging to his temples. Little Berthe came to fetch him for her afternoon snack. He did not answer. She pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead. They opened him up and found nothing.

Homais, meanwhile, had just received the cross of honor.