Madame Bovary

“[S]tood a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons. It was a bride’s bouquet, the other one’s bouquet! She stared at it. Charles, noticing this, picked it up and took it away to the attic. While her belongings were being arranged round the room, Emma sat in an armchair, thinking about her own bouquet packed in its box, and wondering dreamily what would be done with it if she were to die.”

The bouquet symbolizes the lingering presence of Charles’s first wife, whom he was not in love with. The bouquet also symbolizes how quickly Charles moved on from his first marriage. The bouquet is not even dried up and discarded before Charles seizes the chance to marry Emma. This emphasizes Charles’s passion for Emma and the life he held with his first wife as an unfilled, incomplete life. This quote also asks what will happen to Emma’s bouquet if she were to die suddenly, which symbolizes Emma’s subconscious dread that she will die in Charles’s boring house in a small, provincial town.

“Before her marriage, she had believed that she was in love; but since the happiness she had expected this love to bring her had not come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what exactly was meant, in real life, by the words ‘bliss,’ ‘passion,’ and ‘ecstasy,’ words that she had found so beautiful in books.”

Emma’s disillusionment with her marriage is quick to develop. She discovers suddenly that what she thought was love was actually a projection of the desires and fantasies she’s developed in literature. This emphasizes Emma’s lack of real-life experience. It also highlights how quickly women were led into marriage before they could figure out what marriage might mean to them. This quote foreshadows more unhappiness for Emma and Charles.

“Accustomed to the tranquil side of nature, she sought the dramatic in its stead. She loved the sea only for its storms, and the green grass only when it grew in patches among ruins. She had to derive a kind of personal profit from things, and rejected as useless anything that did not contribute directly to her heart’s gratification—for her temperament was sentimental rather than artistic, and she longed for emotion, not scenery.”

Emma has been bored by her sequestered life. She seeks drama and emotional turmoil because it brings layers to her life. This quote emphasizes the plight of young girls in the 19th century who were given no options but to be kept away from the world. In a way, Emma’s tranquil life is a privilege, but in another way, it oppresses the other sides of human experience, making her temperament sentimental and emotional because she lacks a sense of community and purpose. This is an important characterization to Emma, as it shows the highs and lows she will come to crave with no in between.

“But a man, surely, should know everything, should excel at many different things, should initiate you into the intensities of passion, into the refinements of life, into all its mysteries? But this man taught nothing, knew nothing, desired nothing. He believed she was happy; and she resented him for this settled calm of his, for his untroubled dullness, for the very happiness she brought him.”

Emma is disappointed that her husband doesn’t echo the projections of masculinity she’s internalized from her society. Charles lives an extremely average life by Emma’s standards, and although he is a good provider and a loving husband, Emma wishes he were more traditionally masculine. This quote emphasizes Emma’s own prejudices about men based on novels and society, as well as her continuing disillusionment with her marriage to Charles. These projections of masculinity highlight the theme of The Gap Between Fantasy and Reality.

“‘You empty your mind,’ he went on, ‘and the hours fly past. Without stirring from your chair, you wander through countries you can see in your mind’s eye, and your consciousness threads itself into the fiction, playing about with the details or following the ups and downs of the plot. You identify with the characters; you feel as if it’s your own heart that’s beating beneath their costumes.’”

Léon’s passion for literature echoes Emma’s reliance on literature for escapism and fantasy. In this quote, Flaubert uses Léon’s voice to capture the magic of the reading experience. This emphasizes the meta-fictive quality of Flaubert’s writing, in which he uses the form of the novel to celebrate the power of the novel. This quote is also important because it evokes Emma’s own feelings so well that it becomes clear that Léon and Emma are of shared minds and spirits when it comes to their interests. Their connection is deepened through this shared interest and passion for fantasy, escapism, and the ways in which the novel can make the world a more beautiful and interesting place than it is in real life.

“A man, at least, is free to explore all passions and all countries, to surmount obstacles, to indulge in the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is constantly thwarted. At once passive and compliant, she has to contend with both the weakness of her body and the subjection imposed by the law.”

When Emma is pregnant, she hopes that her child will be born a boy because she understands firsthand how imprisoning a woman’s life is. In this quote, Flaubert criticizes his own society for their double standards and strict gender roles for boys and for girls. While a boy could become an involved member of society, girls were born and raised to become another wife and mother in Flaubert’s time. This quote also sheds light on Emma’s future distanced relationship with Berthe.

“She became dissociated, for him, from the carnal body that would never be his; and in his heart she soared higher and higher, receding ever further from him as if in some magnificent apotheosis. It was one of those pure emotions that remain quite disconnected from everyday life.”

Léon’s love for Emma increases precisely when he recognizes that actually indulging in the affair is impossible, leaving his feelings strictly in the realm of fantasy. Léon’s love for the fantasy of Emma insinuates that in the Gap Between Fantasy and Reality, fantasy that cannot touch one’s reality is better than the reality of the fantasy coming true.

“But she was filled with lusts, with rage, with hatred. That neatly pleated dress concealed a tempestuous heart […] She was in love with Léon, and she sought out solitude the better to luxuriate in his image. The actual physical sight of him distracted her from the voluptuous pleasures of these thoughts.”

Emma’s love for Léon parallels his love for her in that the necessary distance between them builds the feelings of love even more. For Emma, Léon is a physical manifestation of her fantasies from literature, which makes him yet another fantasy. The reality of Léon is too stressful because there is no way for them to be together without violating very serious social norms of monogamy and marriage. Therefore, without having to deal with the reality of Léon, Emma is free to use Léon as an image for fantasy and escape in her private moments.

“She was suddenly filled with tenderness; she felt limp and unresisting like a tiny feather tossed in a storm; and it was without conscious thought that she set off for the church, eager for any act of devotion, as long as it would overwhelm her soul and obliterate her entire existence.”

When Emma wants to be a better, more devoted wife or person, she returns to the Catholic church that raised her. Here, she tries to use the church and religious fervor to move her in the same way that fantasies of love move her. She turns to the church because it satisfies her need for narrative and escapism. Emma desperately wants to change the reality of her life, and religion provides an opportunity to do that, to believe that an individual can transcend the frustrations and disappointments of their corporeal life.

“It was the first time Emma had had such things said to her, and her pride, like someone relaxing in a steam bath, stretched out languorously, surrendering completely to the warmth of this language.”

This quote captures the moment in which Emma falls for Rodolphe’s manipulation. She is seduced by Rodolphe’s declarations of immorality as a hypocritical judgment from a society that wishes to crush individual happiness and desire. Because Emma feels this way about her own life, she buys into Rodolphe’s declarations as indicative of his feelings for her. She is impressed that she can inspire such thoughts in a man, which escalates her belief that she could also be in love with Rodolphe. This quote shows Emma’s naivete in falling for Rodolphe’s use of compliments.

“Evening shadows were falling; the sun, low in the sky, shone through the branches, dazzling her eyes. Here and there, all around her, in the foliage and on the ground, were shimmering patches of light, as if humming birds had scattered their plumage as they flew past. All was silent; a mellow sweetness seemed to be coming from the trees; she could feel her heart beginning to beat again and the blood flow through her body like a river of milk.”

This quote highlights Flaubert’s use of imagery, symbolism, and simile throughout the novel. His prose captures the beauty of the world around Emma, which provides an important juxtaposition to Emma’s internal turmoil. While Emma falls into hopelessness and disillusionment, the world around her still spins and shows off its beauty. Emma often misses living in the moment because she is so fixated on living in fantasy.

“Again and again she told herself: ‘I’m a lover! I’m a lover!’ reveling in the idea as though she were beginning a second puberty. At last she was to experience those joys of love, that delirium of happiness that she had despaired of ever knowing.”

This quote highlights the moment in which Emma believes that Rodolphe has saved her from a life of boredom. She has projected her fantasies of love and romanticism onto Rodolphe, and this quote proves that she believes her affair with Rodolphe is her opportunity to experience real happiness. She is so happy to be a lover, and yet Rodolphe’s manipulation of Emma’s feelings illustrates an obvious problem with the affair. Therefore, this quote also foreshadows the irony that what Emma believes is happiness is actually the beginning of her downfall.

“She did not know whether she regretted having yielded to him or whether, on the contrary, she wanted to cherish him all the more. The humiliation of acknowledging her own weakness fed a rancor that was soothed by caresses. No longer was it love; it was more like a perpetual seduction. He was subjugating her. It almost frightened her.”

In this quote, Flaubert exposes Rodolphe’s emotional abuse of Emma. Part of Rodolphe’s manipulation tactic is to go through phases where he withdraws his attention from the woman that he is seducing so that she grows confused and therefore self-conscious. A self-conscious and confused woman is an even easier woman to take advantage of. Rodolphe chips away at Emma’s confidence in their relationship, which ironically pulls her closer to him even though she can recognize that she’s afraid of the toxic nature of their relationship.

“How happy those days had been! How free! How full of hope, how fertile in illusions! Now, she had no illusions left. She’d used up a few of them at each new venture of her spirit, at each successive stage of her experience—in virginity, in marriage, and in love—losing them continually, one by one, throughout the course of her life.”

In her desperate sadness over her affair with Rodolphe, Emma looks back on her childhood and misses the days when her life had been easier and happier. Emma realizes that she had not understood then how lucky and happy she had been. This is an issue that most people face; only through hindsight can people fully appreciate the times of life when there was happiness. Emma has experienced chronic unhappiness and dissatisfaction for her whole life—no step or move in her life has ever been good enough. Now she realizes how wrong she had been about rejecting those happy times and not having lived in the moment.

“He could not see—this man of such broad experience—the difference of feeling, beneath the similarity of expression. Because wanton or venal lips had murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings.”

Rodolphe doesn’t know what true love is, which is why he doesn’t understand how his impact on Emma plays with her mind and soul. To Rodolphe, both he and Emma are playing roles in a fun fantasy of love that is the extramarital affair. Rodolphe has been with so many women that he doesn’t believe in love, at least not the kind of love that Emma expresses. Because Emma uses the elevated and extreme language of the novels to express her love, Rodolphe senses that Emma’s love is fake or exaggerated. He’s not wrong about this, but he also doesn’t take responsibility for contributing to this exaggerated love. Rodolphe’s love for Emma is all about words and not actions, which is a juxtaposition to Charles, who genuinely loves Emma and whose actions prove that love.

“This glorious vision remained in her memory as the most beautiful of all possible dreams […]. Her soul, worn out by pride, was finally finding repose in Christian humility.”

Emma still holds the church in high regard for the emotional catharsis it provides and the fantastical narratives that inform the religion. Emma’s “soul, worn out by pride” is an indication of how her character has developed into a tragic figure. Emma’s hamartia is that her desire for love is the very thing that makes her stop loving and appreciating herself and her life. She hopes that the church can fix her or provide a place for her to start reconstructing herself. Because Emma has done this before, the reader knows that there is perhaps something superficial about the way Emma turns to her religion only when she needs it, and not consistently.

“‘I’m only trying to say,’ he then added in a less aggressive tone, ‘that tolerance is the surest means of drawing souls to religion.’”

Monsieur Homais engages the world of theocracy into a philosophical debate throughout the novel. He characteristically rejects the influence of the church because he believes more in independent, individual happiness and rationality. In this quote, he eases his characteristically aggressive tone to suggest tolerance and inclusivity. The softening of Homais’s tone implies the sincerity of his beliefs, making his tone more welcoming as he discusses making Christianity more welcoming.

“They were both imagining an ideal self, and refashioning the past to fit it. Besides, speech, like a rolling press, invariably enlarges and extends the emotions.”

Both Léon and Emma are dreamers: They reject the reality of their real lives and selves in favor of an idealized self. Their mistake is that they also do this with their love, creating a larger-than-life romantic story that didn’t actually happen. Despite the downfall promised by fantasy, Flaubert believes that the Gap Between Fantasy and Reality is inherently exacerbated by the existence of language.

“Like a gigantic boudoir, the church was preparing to receive her; the vaulting was bending forward to welcome within its shadows the confession of her love; the windows were radiant with colour to illuminate her face, and the incense would be burning so that she might, like an angel, appear before him in a cloud of scented vapour.”

Ironically, Emma’s affair with Léon begins in a cathedral. This is a direct juxtaposition with the moral codes of the Catholic church. This quote romanticizes Emma in Léon’s perspective through the heightened narratives of the sacred setting. Emma becomes angelic, and the church itself becomes a boudoir. The sexualization of Emma inside the cathedral emphasizes the shifting of social norms in 19th-century France.

“Her mercurial temperament, by turns mystical and joyful, loquacious and taciturn, passionate and cool, constantly stirred a thousand desires in him, awakening different instincts or memories. She was the beloved of every novel, the heroine of every drama, the vague she of every volume of poetry.”

In Léon’s perspective, Emma becomes the romantic heroine of literature that she always wanted to be. He casts her as his mistress and the star of an iconic love story. In turning Emma into a literary character rather than see her for the real person she is, Léon creates a fairy tale out of this affair. Putting Emma on this pedestal is part of the dynamic of their affair, but it also removes both Léon and Emma further from reality.

“He never disagreed with any of her ideas; he acquiesced in all her tastes; he was becoming her mistress, rather than she his. Her sweet murmurs and her kisses ravished his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruptness, so deep-seated and so dissembling as to seem almost intangible?”

In this quote, Flaubert shifts the gender roles in Emma’s affair with Léon. She has learned from Rodolphe how to manipulate love to fit her own desires, thus placing Léon in a role that more closely resembles a stereotypical mistress. In swapping these gender roles, Flaubert reveals the dynamics of this affair as one in which Emma holds the power.

“What an impossible dream! Nothing, in any case, was worth the effort of searching. Everything was a lie! Every smile concealed a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, every pleasure brought revulsion, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only a vain craving for a still more sublime delight.”

Emma soon grows tired of her affair with Léon. This quote emphasizes Emma’s chronic dissatisfaction. Every appearance of happiness is, for Emma, a farce. Emma has learned that happiness is fleeting, and pleasure is intertwined with disgust and shame. This is because Emma is searching for happiness in the wrong places, though her dissociation from reality stops her from acknowledging this.

“Filled with disgust, Emma, over her shoulder, flung him a five-franc piece. It was all she had left in the world. To cast it away like that was, she thought, beautiful.”

Emma, on the brink of impoverishing her family, gives away a coin to a beggar. To Emma, this is a symbol of her compassion and her romantic ideas about her identity. In reality, Emma is disgusted by the beggar and has little compassion for anyone but herself and her self-pity. This quote emphasizes Emma’s detachment from her reality and her inability to perceive her privilege in the face of real external conflicts that oppress other less-fortunate people.