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Madame Bovary · Part II

Chapter 12

LoveMoney and WealthLanguage and NarrationDream and Fantasy

Chapter summary

Emma Bovary and Rodolphe Boulanger love each other again, and she starts sending for him in broad daylight, complaining about her husband and asking that they run away together; he laughs and changes the subject. While she covers her lover with gifts bought on credit from the merchant Lheureux, who also orders the wooden leg for Hippolyte, Emma finds herself squeezed by an invoice and pays it, for now, with the money that Monsieur Derozerays sends to her husband. After a quarrel with her mother-in-law over the servant Félicité, she begs Rodolphe to take her away, and he, moved, agrees; Emma orders from Lheureux a cloak, a trunk, and a sleeping bag, and the escape, after many postponements by Rodolphe, is set for Monday, 4 September. On the Saturday before, Rodolphe hears Emma swear that she will be happy with him, and walking back across the prairie on foot, he decides that he will not leave.

Analysis

Rodolphe agrees to leave the moment Emma, in tears, kisses him: he loses his head, asks what he should do, and his only objection is the daughter. Then he postpones (weeks, an illness, a trip) until he fixes 4 September and, as he leaves the last night, tells himself that he cannot expatriate himself or bear a child. Emma counts the days and orders a cloak and a trunk; his decision runs on another plane.

With the public humiliation of Charles Bovary in the background, Emma withdraws even further from him and intensifies the cult of the lover: well-kept nails, perfumes, jewels, the room prepared as a courtesan would prepare it while awaiting a prince. Rodolphe, for his part, no longer distinguishes Emma from the other women he has had: "the charm of novelty, little by little, falling away like clothes being taken off, left bare the eternal monotony of passion."

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