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Madame Bovary · Part II

Chapter 1

Language and NarrationReligion

Chapter summary

The book goes to Yonville-l'Abbaye (see Yonville), a village eight leagues from Rouen, on the borders of Normandy, which the narrator walks through from the bridge to the church, from the town hall shaped like a Greek temple to Homais's pharmacy, declaring that nothing there has changed since the events he is about to tell. On the eve of market day, the widow Lefrançois, mistress of the Golden Lion inn, prepares supper while Homais argues with her about billiards and religion, and the tax collector Binet takes his place in the small parlor at six sharp. Abbé Bournisien appears only to fetch his umbrella, and Homais accuses him of hypocrisy as soon as he leaves. At last the Swallow stagecoach arrives, late because Emma's greyhound ran off across the fields, bringing the Bovarys, Emma Bovary and Charles Bovary, and the merchant Lheureux.

Analysis

Homais attacks the priest only after he leaves, and what he seeks is not the truth about the refusal of drink: it is an audience. The text says that, at the height of his speech, he imagined himself in full session of the town council and looked for listeners with his eyes, while the innkeeper, who was no longer even listening, waited for the stagecoach. The hypocrisy he denounces is the other man's; the stage is his.

The opening is geographical before it is narrative: Yonville lies on the border between Normandy, Picardy and Ile-de-France. Flaubert defines the region in one sentence:

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