Who He Is
The priest of Yonville. He enters Chapter 1 of Part II in the kitchen of the Golden Lion inn only to ask the innkeeper to send him to the rectory the umbrella he left at the Ernemont convent, declines the drink offered, and leaves without lingering; as soon as he is gone, Homais accuses him of hypocrisy.
Trajectory
In Chapter 3 of Part II he becomes indignant at the baptism of Berthe Bovary, when the grandfather Bovary pours champagne over the child's head; he nearly leaves and is placated by pleas. In Chapter 6 of Part II, Emma Bovary goes to the church to seek him out and finds him distracted by the mischief of the catechism boys. When he calls himself "the doctor of souls," it is she who answers:
- Yes…, you relieve all miseries.
Emma tries to speak of those who have bread and nothing else; he completes the phrase with fire for the winter, and it is she who replies "What does that matter?", a question he does not understand ("What? What does it matter?") and at once attributes to indigestion. The two stand "face to face, saying nothing," and he returns to the catechism, claiming "duty above all."
In Chapter 14 of Part II, during Emma's convalescent devotion, he does not feel versed in her fervor and writes to Boulard, the bishop's bookseller, asking for "any work of superior quality, intended for a lady who was full of grace"; a parcel of pious books arrives, chosen at random, which she reads hastily and which irritates her.
In Chapter 8 of Part III he gives Emma extreme unction.
first the eyes, which had so coveted all earthly splendors; then the nostrils, eager for warm breezes and amorous perfumes; then the mouth, which opened to lies, which had moaned with pride and cried out with lust; then the hands, which had delighted in tender touches; and finally the soles of the feet, once so swift when they ran to satisfy her desires, and which would walk no more.
At the wake, in Chapter 9 of Part III, he argues about religion with Homais beside the body, each citing his own bookshelf: on one side Voltaire, D'Holbach, and the Encyclopédie; on the other the "Letters from Some Portuguese Jews" and Nicolas's "The Reason of Christianity." The next night they argue again, now about the celibacy of priests and confession, and end up falling asleep facing each other, moving no more than the corpse beside them.
The scene is the most economical portrait in the novel of what Homais and Bournisien have in common: neither of the two is speaking to the other; both are quoting in order to win.
Themes Embodied
The standard theme running through him is Religion. The scene in Chapter 6 of Part II can be read as the point at which the novel closes the door on institutional religion as an answer to Emma's emptiness, and also as the scene in which the priest returns Emma to the shadows, treating her anguish as hunger or cold.
The two long conversations of Bournisien in the novel end in the same way, without a word: with Emma, in the church, the two "face to face, saying nothing"; with Homais, at the wake, the two asleep facing each other beside her body.
Relationships
- Emma Bovary: the parishioner who seeks him out in Chapter 6 of Part II and to whom he gives extreme unction.
- Homais: the religious opponent, from the inn to the wake.
- Berthe Bovary: the child of the baptism.
- Symbol linked to him: Yonville.