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Madame Bovary · Part III

Chapter 8

LoveDesireMoney and WealthReligion

Chapter summary

Emma Bovary goes to La Huchette to ask Rodolphe Boulanger for three thousand francs, the last name on a list of closed doors, and on the way, as she sees the castle park again, she feels the tenderness of the early days return. Rodolphe receives her with vague words, for a moment supposes she has come out of love and, on learning the sum, refuses calmly, saying he does not have them; the narrator assures us that he was not lying, for, had he had the money, he would have given it. Emma lists the objects in his room, the clock, the butt of the carbine, reads the refusal as lack of love, accuses him, and leaves.

Back in Yonville, Emma asks Justin for the key to the cabinet, the laboratory of Homais where the blue jar of arsenic is kept; she repeats the request in a sweet voice, without giving the reason, then claims it is to kill the rats, and the boy, who finds her beautiful and majestic like a ghost, follows her to the attic. She goes straight to the third shelf, takes the jar, and eats the white powder. That night she leaves Charles Bovary a letter, asking that no one be accused, which he reads when the vomiting begins.

Charles calls Doctor Canivet and Professor Larivière; Berthe Bovary is brought to her mother's bed, looks for the little shoe where she used to receive her gifts, looks at Emma, and draws back saying she is afraid. Canivet prescribes an emetic, and Larivière, on seeing Emma, says there is nothing to be done and goes to lunch at Homais's house. After the last rites given by Abbé Bournisien, who anoints one by one the eyes, the nostrils, the mouth, the hands and the feet, the blind man passes in the street singing, Emma laughs with an atrocious laugh, and dies.

Analysis

Emma goes to La Huchette because it is the last name on the list, and on the way, the text says, she rediscovers the sensations of her first tenderness, without realizing that she is hurrying to offer herself to what she had just refused with indignation before the notary. When Rodolphe says no, the text separates cause and suffering: she suffers only for her love, and it is the refused love, not the debt, that pushes her down Homais's stairs.

Rodolphe receives her with vague words and refuses the money with perfect calm. The narrator comments, and it is the comment, not the character, that carries the harshest idea of the chapter: the request for money is what reveals romantic love as a transaction always postponed.

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