Who He Is
Country doctor, husband of Emma Bovary and father of Berthe Bovary. He enters the novel as the "new boy," mocked for a cap that the narrator describes with the same attention he later gives to Emma.
une de ces pauvres choses, enfin, dont la laideur muette a des profondeurs d’expression comme le visage d’un imbécile, one of those poor things, in short, whose mute ugliness has depths of expression like the face of an imbecile.
The central point of the first three chapters: Charles never decides anything on his own will. He obeys his mother, then his first wife, then, in the following chapter, his own desire for the first time in his life, without noticing the difference.
Trajectory
In Chapter 1 of Part I he grows up between a father who wants a Spartan son and a mother who dreams of an illustrious one, and the father, through indifference, wins out until the boy is twelve, when the mother imposes his studies.
avec du toupet, un homme réussit toujours dans le monde, with nerve, a man always gets ahead in the world.
In Chapter 1 of Part I he fails the first medical examination, passes the second on a retake, and marries the older, wealthy widow chosen by his mother; when she dies, in Chapter 2 of Part I, he returns to the Rouault farm and marries Emma, in Chapter 4 of Part I. In Chapter 5 of Part I he sees in the bedroom the bouquet of the dead bride and takes it to the attic. In Tostes, in Chapter 7 of Part I, the narrator measures the distance between him and his wife through their conversation.
La conversation de Charles était plate comme un trottoir de rue, et les idées de tout le monde y défilaient dans leur costume ordinaire, sans exciter d’émotion, de rire ou de rêverie, Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas paraded along it in their ordinary clothes, stirring no emotion, laughter, or reverie.
In Chapter 8 of Part I, on the way back from the ball at La Vaubyessard, he finds the green cigar case on the road. At the end of Chapter 9 of Part I he decides on the move to Yonville as a remedy for an evil he does not understand.
In Chapter 2 of Part II he offers only practical phrases at the dinner where Emma and Léon build their repertoire; in Chapter 3 of Part II, Homais, who had already been summoned before the king's prosecutor for illegally practicing medicine, cultivates him as an ally to secure his silence. In Chapter 7 of Part II Charles's mother arrives, diagnoses in her daughter-in-law a lack of manual labor, and cancels the subscription to the Rouen library.
In Chapter 11 of Part II Homais convinces him to operate on the club foot of Hippolyte, and the narrator raises the incision to the scale of historic surgeons.
Neither Ambroise Paré, applying for the first time since Celsus, after fifteen centuries, the immediate ligature of an artery, nor Dupuytren, when about to open an abscess through a thick layer of brain, nor Gensoul, when he performed the first removal of the upper jaw, probably felt their hearts pound so hard
Five days later the crisis begins, the leg gangrenes, and Canivet amputates. Charles asks Emma for a kiss, she explodes, and the barometer falls from the wall. In Chapter 13 of Part II, when she wakes asking for Rodolphe's letter, he hears only delirium. At the opera in Rouen, in Chapter 15 of Part II, he meets Léon and insists that his wife stay one more day.
In Chapter 2 of Part III his father dies, and Charles, unable to deal with paperwork, gives in when Emma, advised by Lheureux, brings him the model of a general power of attorney for her to manage the couple's affairs. In Chapter 5 of Part III, when his mother discovers the power of attorney and burns it, he takes his wife's side against his mother for the first time and signs a second power of attorney.
In Chapter 9 of Part III he falls into a shapeless grief; in Chapter 11 of Part III he sinks into the debts Emma left and responds with congratulations on the announcement of Léon's wedding.
How happy my poor wife would have been!
Charles does not yet know that Léon was Emma's lover when he writes this in the congratulations letter for his wedding.
Afterward he finds in the attic the letter of rupture from Rodolphe Boulanger, which he reads as proof of a platonic love; only later, in Emma's writing desk, does he find Léon's letters and Rodolphe's portrait.
Courage, Emma! Be brave! I do not want to make your existence unhappy
He meets Rodolphe by chance and does not accuse him.
It was fate's fault!
The next day he dies alone in the garden, holding a lock of Emma's hair, and his daughter finds him.
And, believing he was playing, she pushed him lightly. He fell to the ground. He was dead.
Themes Embodied
The standard theme running through him is Marriage. In Chapters 7 to 11 of Part III, one reading puts him at the opposite pole from calculation:
The axis is not vice against virtue. It is calculation against commitment. Rodolphe Boulanger and Léon calculate and refuse; Charles Bovary, mediocre but faithful, does not calculate and is destroyed for it.
The phrase with which Charles absolves Rodolphe at their last meeting, "It was fate's fault!", is almost the same that Rodolphe writes, in Chapter 13 of Part II, in his own letter of rupture: "Fate is to blame!". The word that served Rodolphe to absolve himself before Emma returns through the mouth of the husband, who knew only the letter.
Relationships
- Emma Bovary: the wife, whose lovers he discovers only after her death, through the letters.
- Homais: the neighbor who cultivates him as an ally and leads him to the operation.
- Hippolyte: the patient of the operation who becomes a public humiliation.
- Rodolphe Boulanger: the author of the letter he finds and the man he absolves.
- Léon: the young man he meets again at the opera and congratulates on his marriage.
- Lheureux: the creditor whose power of attorney he accepts without understanding, and whose calculation ruins him after Emma's death.
- Berthe Bovary: the daughter, who finds him dead.
- Symbols linked to him: the green cigar case, which he finds, and Yonville, to which he decides to move.