Who He Is
Clerk in Yonville when Emma Bovary arrives, later a student in Paris, and her lover in Rouen in Part III. His surname is Dupuis, and in Yonville he is the clerk of the notary Guillaumin. He is drawn to Rodolphe Boulanger because the two speak to Emma the language of her novels: Léon returns the formulas she gives him, and Rodolphe uses them out of calculation.
Trajectory
In Chapter 2 of Part II he builds with Emma, at the arrival dinner, a shared repertoire: the sea, whose contemplation, she says, "lifts the soul and conveys ideas of infinity," the lakes and waterfalls of Switzerland he has heard of, and the books in which, he says, "thought, entwining itself with fiction," lingers over details. At the end of Chapter 3 of Part II, alone in the Pasture at the top of the Argueil slope, he sums up his own boredom, after the naming and baptism of Berthe.
At the end of the chapter, Léon, alone in the Pasture on the Argueil slope, sums up his boredom:
- What boredom! - he said to himself. - What a dreary life!
In Chapter 4 of Part II, during the evenings at the house of Homais, he forms with Emma a complicity in which nothing happens: the plants in the windows, the carpet given as a gift that the village reads as proof of romance. He hesitates, writes letters and tears them up, and in Chapter 5 of Part II finds her "so virtuous and unapproachable" that he gives up all hope; he leaves for Paris without declaring himself. At the farewell, in Chapter 6 of Part II, he asks to kiss Berthe Bovary.
- Then, English fashion - she said, giving him her hand and forcing herself to laugh.
In Chapter 15 of Part II he reappears at the opera interval in Rouen, announced by Charles Bovary.
He had not pressed it again since that spring night when rain fell on the green leaves, when they had said goodbye, standing, by the window.
In Chapter 1 of Part III he returns from Paris without the clerk's shyness and plans the seduction scene, after following the couple from afar to the inn the night before and spending the night turning over a plan.
Self-assurance depends on the setting one is in: one does not speak in the mezzanine as one does on the fifth floor
He brings to the cathedral the first flowers he has ever bought for a woman, but Emma takes refuge in a chapel to pray, and a tireless guide insists on showing tombs and relics. He flees the church with her, and the flight ends in the cab.
Léon was fleeing, because he had the impression that his love [...] would now evaporate
He spends three days with her at the Hotel de Boulogne, in Chapter 3 of Part III, and Thursdays in Rouen. When Emma asks him for verses, he copies a sonnet from an album, more out of a wish to please her than out of vanity, and Chapter 5 reverses the roles.
he was really the one who behaved as if he were a mistress
In Chapter 6 of Part III Homais drags him around Rouen for hours while Emma waits, and boredom comes to both of them.
They knew each other far too well for those surprises of possession that multiply pleasure a hundredfold. Emma was as bored with Léon as he was weary of her. Emma now found in adultery all the insipidity of marriage
In Chapter 7 of Part III Emma asks him for money after the seizure, and he promises and fails. After her death he marries, and in Chapter 11 of Part III Charles writes him a congratulatory letter without knowing who he was.
Charles does not yet know that Léon was Emma's lover when he writes this in the congratulatory letter for his wedding.
How happy my poor wife would have been!
Themes Embodied
The standard themes running through him are Love, Language and narration, Dream and fantasy, and Marriage. In Chapters 1 to 6 of Part III, Léon can be read as an inverted mirror of Emma, a weaker version of the same mechanism: sentimental ambition without the courage to sustain it. He seeks in Emma the vocabulary that the clerk's profession never gave him.
The separation and the reunion with Emma are recorded by the same gesture, the handshake: the "English" farewell, without a kiss, in Chapter 6 of Part II, and his hand, which she "had not pressed again" since that night by the window, in the opera interval of Chapter 15.
Relationships
- Emma Bovary: the complicity without declaration of Part II and the adultery of Part III.
- Rodolphe Boulanger: the other lover, with the same vocabulary.
- Charles Bovary: the husband, whom he meets again at the opera and congratulates on his marriage.
- Guillaumin: the boss in Yonville.
- Homais: the host of the Yonville evenings and the one who drags him around Rouen.
- Berthe Bovary: the child whom he asks to kiss at the farewell.
- Symbols linked to him: the cab and Yonville.