Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Paris in July 2024)

Madame Bovary has come to me twice in my life. Both times were when my heart was ripped and torn by another. When I was seventeen, I sympathized with her; now I blame her.

She was the lovely daughter of a farmer, who caught Charles Bovary’s eye when he came to attend to her father. After repeatedly visiting their home, for Charles is enraptured, he asks her to marry him. And so, she becomes the wife of a well-meaning, but not very proficient, doctor.

This is not enough for her. When invited to a ball, she dances with a dashing viscount, and thereafter yearns for such romance. For someone who would carry a green leather cigarette case, with his initials monogrammed on the outside. Her life begins to bore, and eventually dissatisfy her, in small amounts at first. She makes eyes with a clerk, Leon, and he with her, until he leaves the town afraid of compromising them both.

And then, she meets Rodolphe. He is a master at enticing women, intending nothing more lasting than a momentary dalliance. But, to Emma Bovary, he becomes everything.

“Oh, I will have her,” he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise, “Where shall we meet?” 

She leaves her home at dawn, to walk to his, waking him in his bed with her tender kisses. They meet in the garden of her home, finding every opportunity to be together. She buys him beautiful things which she cannot afford, from Lheureux, who obsequiously gives her everything she desires. Until he does not.

Rodolphe sends her word, the night before they are to leave together, that he cannot come. She is too good for him, blah, blah, blah. Emma is thrown into despair, which only becomes worse when Lheureux demands the money for what she has so carelessly bought. He will not be assuaged any longer, and in utter panic Emma goes to the chemist shop next door, stuffing handfuls of arsenic into her mouth.

Hers is a death most horrific; I will never forget the black liquid flowing from her mouth when she is being dressed for burial. Charles mourns her with everything he is; she was too foolish to see what she had in his love.

Flaubert has described the hunger some women possess to be loved by someone who thrills them; the steadfast love of a husband does not suffice. Instead, they are drawn to danger, to romance, to fulfillment which is not possible from a lover. It cannot satisfy, it cannot last. We find this in Anna Karenina, and again in Emma Bovary. They are two of my favorite novels, reminding me not to put my love where it should not go. 

As Gustave Flaubert has written, “We must not touch our idols, the gilt sticks to our fingers.”

(I read this book specifically for Paris in July, the links for which can be found here.)