Chapter summary
Before the ball, Flaubert measures the distance between husband and wife with an image that became a critical landmark of the novel. Emma Bovary imagines the honeymoon she never had, in lands with sonorous names, and finds neither words nor courage to tell Charles Bovary about it. His conversation the narrator compares to a sidewalk: everyone's ideas parade through it in their everyday clothes, without arousing emotion, laughter or daydream. Charles does not know how to swim, fence or shoot, and thinks his wife is happy, which she resents.
Emma takes good care of the house, draws and plays the piano, and Charles rises in his own esteem for having such a wife; his mother, who finds her daughter-in-law's manners too refined for the couple's position, wages with her a war of trembling courtesies full of rage. Emma tries to love her husband in theory, reciting verses by moonlight, and discovers that the will to feel does not produce feeling. A gamekeeper whom Charles cured gives her an Italian greyhound, Djali, and on walks to the abandoned pavilion of Banneville she asks herself why she married and imagines other possible husbands, handsome and witty. She compares her life with that of her convent companions who live in the city, and concludes that hers is cold like an attic whose skylight faces north, where boredom, a silent spider, weaves its web in every corner of the heart.
It is in this emptiness, with no event yet having occurred, that the invitation arrives from the Marquis d'Andervilliers to a ball at La Vaubyessard, prompted by an almost comic chance: Charles had lanced an abscess in the Marquis's mouth; the Marquis's man of business, sent to Tostes to pay for the operation, saw magnificent cherries in the doctor's garden; and the Marquis, whose cherry trees at the château were weak, asked Charles for cuttings, went to thank him in person and noticed Emma. On Wednesday the couple sets out by gig, with a trunk tied behind.
Analysis
La conversation de Charles était plate comme un trottoir de rue, et les idées de tout le monde y défilaient dans leur costume ordinaire, sans exciter d’émotion, de rire ou de rêverie
, Charles's conversation was as flat as a street sidewalk, and everyone's ideas paraded through it in their everyday clothes, without arousing emotion, laughter or daydreaming.
The comparison comes right after Emma wants to confide her restlessness and finds neither words, occasion nor daring. If Charles noticed, the text says, she would feel her heart open; as he gives no sign, the ideas of everyone pass through his conversation without arousing emotion. Emma resents in him what is calm: he believes her happy, and she bears him ill will for that serenity.
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