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Madame Bovary · Part III

Chapter 11

LoveMarriageMoney and WealthLanguage and Narration

Chapter summary

Charles Bovary, in debt, sees Lheureux and Vinçart resume their collection and the house empty out: Félicité runs off with Théodore, taking Emma Bovary's wardrobe; he sells the silverware and the furniture, except her room, and ends up breaking with his mother. He replies with congratulations to the announcement of Léon's marriage, finds Rodolphe's letter of rupture in the attic and then, in the writing desk, Léon's letters and Rodolphe's portrait. Meeting Rodolphe Boulanger at a fair, he says he bears him no ill will and that it was the fault of fate, and the next day he dies in the arbor, holding a lock of Emma's hair. Berthe Bovary is sent to her grandmother and then to a poor aunt, who puts her in a spinning factory. Homais, for his part, defeats the blind man with a newspaper campaign, sets the epitaph on Emma's tomb, drives three doctors out of Yonville, and in the end receives the Legion of Honor.

Analysis

Charles ruins himself because he refuses to sell Emma's furniture or to touch her room: the text says that every creditor took the opportunity to profit, and bills for lessons she never took appear. He adopts her tastes, patent-leather boots, white ties, and signs notes as she used to: the narrator says she corrupted him even beyond the grave. The renewed bills and the mortgage come from this.

The chapter opens with Berthe, to whom no one tells of her mother's death:

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