The Bovarys move. Charles decides that a change of scenery
is necessary to calm Emma's nerves and cure her vapours. Their new hometown Yonville
is located precisely twenty-four miles from Rouen: "We leave the high road
at La Boissière and keep straight on to the top of the Leux Hill ..." Mentioning
place names (the forest of Argueil, the Saint-Jean Hills) and positioning us
with the narrator on the journey ("Before us ... ", "Here we are
...") (Part 1, Chapter 1) Flaubert is doing his best to bring us right into
the landscape and into real France. Moreover, the narrative states that
"Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at
Yonville." (Ibid.) This does not
only suggest the immutable nature of sleepy French country side, but it also that
we could today walk into the setting of Emma Bovary's life. Unlike many earlier
novels, setting their scandalous events in the town of X or the village of Y, Flaubert
is rooting his story firmly in reality.
During the move from Tostes
to Yonville-L'Abbaye, three significant things happen, if we choose to read
them as significant. First, Emma's greyhound - that token of chivalric romance
- runs away (Part 2, Chapter 1). Secondly, in the carriage with them travels
Monsieur Lheureux, a draper. Thirdly, a little later we learn that the plaster curė has fallen from the removal load
and shattered to pieces on the pavement (Part 2, Chapter 3). Emma believes the
move to Yonville and sleeping in a strange place is "an inauguration of a
new phase in her life." (Part 2, Chapter 2) All of the three little details
above would seem to support this notion.
The night the Bovarys arrive in Yonville, a young notary's
clerk joins them for the evening meal at the inn. Lėon is "a good deal
bored in Yonville" and keen to sit down with the new arrivals. Emma and
Lėon get on like a house on fire. The narrative very neatly dovetails the
discussion around the table showing Emma and Lėon talking to each other
ignoring the others (Part 2, Chapter 2). Again, Emma confesses she loves to be
thrilled. When Lėon tells her he appreciates poetry because he thinks
"verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to
tears." Emma replies: "I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush
breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate
sentiments, such as there are in Nature." (Part2, Chapter 2) No soppy
poetry for Emma, she prefers sensational stories.
"Thus side by side, while Charles and chemist chatted,
they entered into one of those vague conversations where every chance saying
brings you back to the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres,
titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes,
where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked
of everything till the end of dinner." Part 2, Chapter 2).
Like two teenagers in the company of dull adults, Emma and Lėon
stick together. "Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a
constant commerce of books and of romances." (Part 2, Chapter 4)
Motherhood does not distract Emma. Berthe Bovary is born
outside of the narrative and is sent to a carpenter's wife to nurse. The idea
of motherhood attracts Emma only fleetingly and she simply does not like her
child very much. This is evil; it was evil in 19th-century France and it is
evil today. Mothers are expected to dote on their children. At no stage in the
novel does the narrator say that Emma is a bad mother. The relationship of Emma
and Berthe and their encounters are superb examples of Flaubert's narrative
method of showing us what happens but not explaining anything (see particularly
Part 2, Chapter 6). Maybe Emma is to be pitied as she is lumbered with a child
she has no feelings for, a child she is incapable of loving. Maybe she is to be
despised for her lack of maternal instinct. You decide.
Emma hoped for a boy. This is one of the more explicitly 'feminist'
moments in the novel:
"She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she
would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an
expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free;
he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of
the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered." (Part 2,
Chapter 3)
If Emma cannot be a man, strong and free, the next best
thing is to have a son and somehow experience manly freedom through him. This
reminds us of Madame Bovary Sr, Charles's mother. That is exactly what she did
- ran her son's life until she was ousted by his love for Emma. Maybe Mme
Bovary Sr would have been happier going to the medical school herself, rather
than squeezing her hapless son through it.
Lėon is very much a male version of Emma. He usually
"maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
dissimulation." He is not interested on politics, he has "some
accomplishments" - a term usually reserved for the skills of young ladies
- a little watercolour painting, a little music, and he "readily talked
literature" (Part 2, Chapter 3). After a walk with Emma, noted by the
gossips of the town, Lėon wonders to the hills: "he threw himself upon the
ground under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers. 'How bored I
am!' He said to himself, 'how bored I am!' He thought he was to be pitied for
living in this village" (Part 2, Chapter 3).
It is inevitable that these two bored romantics would get emotionally
entangled. Lėon falls in love with Emma. The narrative charts this fall nicely
describing Lėon's feelings but again not explaining them. Again, as throughout
the whole narrative, Flaubert's technique of showing us how the characters
feel, but not explaining those feelings, makes us feel alongside them. In this
way, this technique seeks to have a sensational effect.
First "Lėon did not know what to do between his fear of
being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost
impossible." (Part 2, Chapter 3) He talks of Emma endlessly (Part 2,
Chapter 4). He goes through all the agonies of a first-time lover, afraid to
declare his devotion "always halting between the fear of displeasing her
and the shame of being such a coward." (Part 2, Chapter 4)
Emma does no recognize these symptoms at first. "Love,
she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings - a
hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the
will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss." (Part 2,
Chapter 4). After an afternoon outing in
February with the Homais family, the penny finally drops. Emma contrasts the
charming appearance of Lėon, with his bare skin of his neck showing, with that
of Charles and his "look of stupidity" and the knife he carried in
his pocket "like a peasant."
"Yes, charming! Charming! Is he not in love?" she
asked herself; "but with whom? With me!" (Part 2, Chapter 4)
Emma is pleased by this conclusion, "her soul filled
with a new delight." (Part 2, Chapter 4). The very next day, she receives
a visit from M. Lheureux the draper, who comes to tempt her with his wares and
even offers her credit. Emma does not buy anything and feels virtuous. When Lėon
visits, she continues to be good and makes a point about her many duties in
looking after her house and her husband. "What madness!" is all Lėon
can say. Emma maintains her role of a good wife: "her talk, her manners,
everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church
regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity." (Part 2,
Chapter 5) Even Berthe is brought home from the nurse. Charles loves this,
"his cheeks flushed with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness" (Ibid.).
The narrative does not explain why the discovery of Lėon's
love for her should suddenly turn Emma into an 'angel in the house.' This is a
conundrum: why is their love not consummated?
For both Emma and Lėon imagination seems more powerful and
satisfying than reality. Emma appears so "virtuous and inaccessible"
to Lėon that he loses all hope; "he placed her on an extraordinary
pinnacle." She goes through an apotheosis, becomes an unobtainable goddess.
(Part 2, Chapter 5). Similarly, Emma "sought solitude that she might with
the more ease delight in his [Lėon's] image. The sight of his form troubled the
voluptuousness of this meditation." (Ibid.)
She prefers an imagined Lėon to the real man.
Emma is "eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate."
"Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of
passion all blended themselves into one suffering." (Ibid.) She is in a desperate situation: she is keeping Lėon at bay,
loving him and knowing that he loves her. Her hatred is focused on Charles:
"What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to
notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her
an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake,
then, was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle of all felicity, the
cause of all misery and, as it were, the sharp clasp if that complex strap that
buckled her from all sides?" (Part 2, Chapter 5)
Emma is firmly caught between "desire that draws
her" and "conventionality that restrains." (Part 2, Chapter 3).
She is trapped in a marriage like any average 19th-century, middle-class woman.
She dreams of running away with Lėon, but she does not dare seriously contemplate
leaving the safety of Charles. At the same time, the narrative also lets us see
her relationship with Charles as the driving force behind her turmoil, rather
than her desire for Lėon. The way the image of Lėon seems more desirable to
Emma than the man, suggests that he is just a catalyst, something to bring to
the boil the dissatisfactions of her marriage.
Emma's psychology and motivations can be interpreted in
several ways in this part of the narrative. Her apparent virtuousness, her
refusal to declare her feelings to Lėon, her hatred for Charles, all create a
mix of emotions and reactions which produce a complex character. Emma feels
more real because she is not easy to figure out. It is not important to
'explain' her but it is important to recognize Flaubert's success in creating a
fictional character with considerable depth; there are internal workings in
Emma that we do not need to see or understand for them to make her feel real.
The emotional tensions give Emma physical symptoms:
"She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
flowing tears." (Part 2, Chapter 5) We feel for Emma, the narrative is
able to convey her panic and her frustration as she thrashes against the bonds
of respectability and religion. It seems a tragedy that Emma is tied to
Charles, when she and Lėon seem to suit each other so well and are in love. How
sweet life could be if they were free to head off to the sunset together - or
would it? Any union of these two young air-heads would probably end in
disaster. But for a short while at least, the reader's sympathies are with
them. The narrative has shifted that sense of sympathy quite cleverly from poor
Charles with a difficult spouse to poor Emma imprisoned in a stifling marriage
with true love almost within her grasp.
Lėon is man, therefore he can move on. He "was weary of
loving without any result; ... He was so bored with Yonville." (Part 2,
Chapter 6) Lėon begins to imagine an artist's life in Paris, with blue velvet
slippers and a guitar. And once he has conquered his fear for such "a new
condition of life," he packs his bags and goes (Part 2, Chapter 6).
Lėon's memory slowly fades in Emma's mind and "Then the
evil days of Tostes began again." Emma becomes restless and starts
spending. (Part 2, Chapter 7). She becomes a customer of M. Lheureux. The only
cure for this that Charles and her mother can come up with is to stop her
library subscription and "the poisonous trade" of the librarian. (Ibid.) A more efficacious remedy,
however, appears in the form of Monsieur Rodolpho Boulanger of La Huchette. As
on so many occasions, medicine is also poison.
