Madame Bovary Readalong - crinolines, carriages and lovers this way, 1 October

[StColumbofNavron]

Following the successful Anna Karenina readalong (almost coming to a close), Emma Bovary has come up in conversation as a comparison piece. You don't need to have read Anna Karenina though to join in.

We start on 1 October, mark your spot.

The goal is to read one chapter per day. There are three parts, 35 chapters and we'll take a day break between each part. It is fine to post as we go along but no further than the chapter for that day.

I have opted for the Aveling Marx translation (Wordsworth Classics) as that is what is on my shelf, however, more on translations below.

https://welovetranslations.com/2022/04/08/whats-the-best-translation-of-madame-bovary-part-1/
https://welovetranslations.com/2022/04/08/whats-the-best-translation-of-madame-bovary-part-2/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/21/translating-madame-bovary-adam-thorpe

Part 1
1 01-Oct
2 02-Oct
3 03-Oct
4 04-Oct
5 05-Oct
6 06-Oct
7 07-Oct
8 08-Oct
9 09-Oct

BREAK 10-Oct

Part 2
1 11-Oct
2 12-Oct
3 13-Oct
4 14-Oct
5 15-Oct
6 16-Oct
7 17-Oct
8 18-Oct
9 19-Oct
10 20-Oct
11 21-Oct
12 22-Oct
13 23-Oct
14 24-Oct
15 25-Oct

BREAK 26-Oct

Part 3 27-Oct
1 28-Oct
2 29-Oct
3 30-Oct
4 31-Oct
5 01-Nov
6 02-Nov
7 03-Nov
8 04-Nov
9 05-Nov
10 06-Nov
11 07-Nov

Oh dear I've done the accidental strike through again; I thought I'd broken myself of that habit. Sorry

Are we all still here? It's gone all quiet and yet she's done the deed.

Is everyone shunning novels, as advised? Or perhaps suffering from The Vapours?

I thought Père Rouault's letter was rather touching. It harkened back to Emma's age of innocence. She is never happy in the present moment. That is her problem. She is always wistfully looking back to the past or wishing herself away somewhere else.

They will get a cold in their kidneys lying down on the rotten bench in their next-to-nothings!

I'm here! I read ahead so haven't been posting as will confuse myself and others re which chapter we're on.

Part 2, Chapter 10

This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma – and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he’s breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning.

She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais.

While they’re at the pharmacist’s, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist.
This alarms Emma. She’s relieved when Binet leaves.

The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys’ house, after Charles has gone to sleep (doesn’t that seem a little risky, too?).

Léon is all but forgotten by this time.
One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it’s Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he’s beginning to find many of Emma’s demands and goings-on rather vulgar.

Emma’s ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion.

All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he’s still drawn to her – he can’t believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph.

By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple.

Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter – reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult.

For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe.

Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently – Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over.

Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions – she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time…

I'm a couple of chapters behind, need to catch up!

😂at Piggy. I think I do have a case of the vapours. The Friday night vapours.

Read today's chapter during a 4 am bout of insomnia. It didn't help!

Blimey. Poor Hippolyte. And what strange reactions from everyone, not least Emma.

Was this kind of thing normal? I am guessing so, having read the incredible Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn.

The episode concerning Hippolyte is absolutely frightful. Not a chapter to read during the middle of the night, Piggy!

Part Two, Chapter 11

• It turns out that Homais is all excited about some article on curing clubfeet. He’s convinced that Charles should attempt to fix the clubfoot of Hippolyte, a servant at Madame Lefrançois’s inn.
• Emma is easily convinced. She hopes that the operation will earn Charles some respect and extra cash. This helps a lot with her resolution to stay with him.
• Charles, despite his profound lack of medical talent, agrees to do it. He prepares for the operation by reading and attempting to understand it, while Homais works on getting Hippolyte himself to agree.
• Hippolyte gives in to the pharmacist’s goading (and that of the rest of the town, who all feel involved in this process), and accepts the operation.
• Charles, in the meanwhile, is having a heck of a time figuring out how to fix Hippolyte’s disfigured leg. He’s clearly confused and concerned, but goes ahead gamely anyway. He ends up cutting poor Hippolyte’s Achilles tendon, thinking that it’s the right thing to do. Ugh, just thinking of it gives us the chills.
• After the operation, which appears at first to be a success, Emma actually voluntarily embraces Charles. The two of them are happier together than we’ve ever seen them. She is finally able to muster up a little bit of affection for poor Charles, who she now views as an up-and-coming surgeon in the making.
• Homais busily writes up the operation for the Rouen paper, claiming that it’s a complete success.
• However, this honeymoon period doesn’t last. Five days after the operation, Madame Lefrançois bursts in, claiming that Hippolyte is dying. Charles and Homais rush off to see what’s wrong.
• Gaah! What isn’t wrong would be a better question. Hippolyte’s foot is a disgusting mass of infection, trapped within the bizarre torture device Charles strapped it into. Ignoring Hippolyte's claims of incredible pain, they put him back in the apparatus.
• Three days later, though, the infection is way, way worse – it’s so disgusting we don’t even want to tell you about it here. Seriously. GROSS.
• Everyone tries to make Hippolyte feel better, except for the peasants who come to the inn to play billiards. They just make him feel worse, and tell him that he smells bad.
• Actually, that’s not just a taunt – it’s true. The gangrenous leg reeks up a storm. Hippolyte is in total despair, but Charles, who has no clue how to fix it, just tells him to eat more lightly (what?).
• To make matters even worse, Father Bournisien comes over to harass the crippled man about his lack of religion. We’re sure it didn’t exactly make Hippolyte feel any better.
• Finally, Madame Lefrançois, worried about the lack of improvement, send for Monsieur Canivet, a real M.D. from Neufchâtel.
• Canivet, who is, unlike Charles, an actual doctor, laughs contemptuously when he sees Hippolyte’s condition, and says what everyone should have known by now – the leg must be amputated. He complains to Homais about practitioners (like Charles) who make use of ridiculous procedures without a thought about the patients…or victims, rather.
• Homais feels bad, but chooses not to defend Charles – after all, Monsieur Canivet is an important man.
• The amputation is a big event for the village. Everyone is quite excited, except, presumably, for Hippolyte. Poor guy.
• Canivet struts into the town, confident in his own abilities. He derides officiers de santé like Charles, claiming that they ruin the reputation of doctors everywhere.
• Speaking of our old friend, Charles stays at home, miserable, embarrassed, and guilty for the part he’s played in Hippolyte’s disaster.
• Emma sits by him, humiliated and angry. She’s mad at herself for even hoping that Charles could be anything but mediocre.
• This is the last straw for Emma. She can’t believe she ever felt bad for cheating on Charles.
• The angry tension of the Bovary household is broken by a horrifying shriek that echoes through the village. The amputation is underway.
• Charles and Emma stare at each other through the sounds of Hippolyte’s screams – and to Emma, everything about her husband disgusts her. Her feelings for Rodolphe come rushing back, and it’s as though Charles is permanently alienated from her life from this point on.
• The operation is apparently over – they see Canivet and Homais leave the inn and return to the pharmacy.
• Despairing, Charles asks Emma to kiss him. She refuses him violently, and flees the room.
• Charles has no clue what’s going on.
• That night, Emma and Rodolphe are reunited in the garden – they kiss passionately, their affair back in full bloom.

I've read chapter 12. I feel like reading the rest of the book through my fingers.

A question...how does Emma avoid pregnancy?

I guess if she got pregnant she would pass it off as being her husband's?

Poor Charles would be none the wiser I'd say.

He's absolutely clueless isn't he

I thought she was too repulsed by Charles to have sex with him...

Part Two, Chapter 12

• Emma and Rodolphe’s relationship is passionate again. Sometimes Emma misses Rodolphe so badly that she sends Justin to fetch him in the middle of the day.
• On one such day, she suggests that the two of them run off and live somewhere else. Rodolphe doesn’t understand why she’s so serious over something as trivial as a love affair.
• Emma really is serious, though. The more she loves Rodolphe, the more she hates Charles – in comparison to her lover, her husband seems impossibly dull, crude, and generally icky.
• Emma’s vanity really emerges here; to keep herself looking good for Rodolphe, she spends all her time thinking about her appearance and making her room ready for his visits.
• Félicité is busy all day washing lingerie for Emma. While she does the laundry, she chats to Justin, who’s always hanging around. He’s fascinated by the assortment of mysterious feminine garments.
• Emma’s spending is clearly getting out of control. Her closets are full of shoes, which she frequently throws away and replaces. Charles doesn’t make a peep about any of this.
• He also doesn’t complain about the purchase of a beautiful, super-fancy prosthetic leg that Emma insists they get for Hippolyte. He’s awed by the glory of this leg, and they get him plainer one for everyday wear. Hippolyte quickly goes back to work, and Charles feels guilty every time he hears the stableboy tap-tapping his ways along the street on his false leg.
• Monsieur Lheureux is Emma’s new constant companion. He talks to her endlessly about the fads in Paris, and she gives in, ordering item after item. For a while, she feels safe like this – he never asks for money.
• One day, however, after Emma purchases a beautiful riding crop for Rodolphe, Lheureux suddenly shows up with a giant bill. Emma’s not sure what to do – she doesn’t have any money. In fact, there’s no money in the whole house. She manages to put him off for a little while, but the merchant soon loses patience.
• Desperately, Emma tells him to take back the things she’s bought for him. Craftily, he tells her that he only really needs the riding crop back – and he offers to ask Charles to return it. Based on her panicked reaction, he figures out the truth: she’s having an affair.
• Fortunately, a big payment comes in just in time from one of Charles’s patients. When Lheureux returns for his money, ready to strike some kind of devilish deal, he’s shocked to see Emma offer him payment in full.
• Unfortunately, this means that the household is short on money. Emma puts this little fact out of her mind for the time being.
• Rodolphe continues to receive extravagant gifts from his mistress, which is actually really ridiculous, since he’s the wealthy one. In addition to the riding crop, she gives him a ring, a scarf, and an embroidered cigar case like the one Charles found on the road. Rodolphe is embarrassed by the lavish presents, but accepts them anyway.
• Emma keeps making her same old foolishly romantic demands – and again, Rodolphe starts to get a little sick of it. They fight and make up over and over again; Emma lavishes praise on him, and pledges her unending devotion.
• Rodolphe, who’s much more of a cynic than she is, gets fed up her melodramatic declarations.
• Rodolphe starts to cultivate new pleasures in his relationship with Emma – he seems to enjoy corrupting her and forcing her to be compliant to him. She wallows in her infatuation for him, giving in to his desires.
• Emma kind of loses it under Rodolphe’s influence. She stops caring about what people think, and starts acting like what one might call a "loose woman," to use a rather outdated phrase. She starts smoking in public and wearing daringly "mannish" clothes.
• The worst of it comes when Charles’s mother visits. The two women, whose relationship is already in the dumps, get into a huge fight over Félicité, of all people. Old Madame Bovary discovered Félicité with a man (gasp!) in the house in the dead of night, and accuses Emma of being immoral. Emma takes this as a class issue, claiming that her mother-in-law is just an unsophisticated, narrow-minded peasant. She tells the older woman to get out of the house.
• Poor Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two domineering women in his life once more. He helplessly tries to make things better.
• Emma gives in and apologizes to her mother-in-law – but she certainly doesn’t mean it.
• She puts up an emergency signal for Rodolphe; he comes to see what’s the matter, and she launches into the whole story and begs him to take her away. He doesn’t exactly say yes or no.
• For the next few days, Emma acts like a new woman. She’s completely docile, and even asks her mother-in-law for a recipe. Is it possible that this new behavior is for the benefit of Charles and his mom, or that it’s to convince herself more fully of the repressive demands of her everyday life? No – the truth is that she’s so swept up in the fantasy of running away with Rodolphe that she simply doesn’t even notice anything around her.
• Emma keeps bringing up the idea of escape with Rodolphe, imagining scene after scene of their flight from Yonville.
• Emma is more beautiful than ever. Poor Charles is even more in love with her than ever.
• Charles indulges for the first time in his own flights of fancy. His dreams are centered around Emma and Berthe. He imagines an impossible future in which everyone lives happily ever after; he envisions Berthe growing as beautiful as her mother, and can almost see the two of them together, almost like sisters rather than mother and daughter.
• In the meanwhile, on the other side of the bed, Emma sees herself escaping with Rodolphe, fleeing to a new country full of fantastical, almost mythological landscapes. She doesn’t imagine anything specific. In fact, her vision of the future seems almost as consistent as her monotonous present, with one significant difference: in this future, she’ll be blissfully happy.
• In preparation for her supposed elopement with Rodolphe, Emma orders a long cloak and traveling trunk from Monsieur Lheureux. He figures she’s had a fight with Charles.
• Emma gives her watch to Lheureux to sell in exchange for these goods.
• Rodolphe and Emma actually set a date – they will leave the next month. She plans to make like she’s going to Rouen to do some shopping, but will instead meet Rodolphe, who will have made all the travel arrangements for them to flee to Italy. Everything looks like it’s actually falling into place.
• There’s no mention of what will happen to little Berthe – Rodolphe hopes that Emma will just forget about her.
• Weeks pass – Rodolphe delays the trip for various reasons. All of August passes, and they decide that they will absolutely, positively leave on Monday, September 4.
• The Saturday before the trip, Rodolphe stops by. He’s looking sad and particularly tender. They swear that they love each other once more.
• Rodolphe suggests that there’s still time to change her mind, but Emma is sure: she is ready to leave Yonville behind.
• Rodolphe takes his leave of Emma. On his way home, he stops, filled with emotion. We discover – surprise, surprise – that he intends to desert her. He’s tempted to go through with the plan – but no, he won’t. Rodolphe is no fool, and he doesn’t intend to become one.

Part Two, Chapter 13

• His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma.
• He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he’s accumulated through many years of being a ladies’ man. All of the women he’s had in the past blur together in his mind – now Emma is just one of them.
• Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can’t allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the "fate" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart.
• To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he’s going on a long trip.
• The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much.
• The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots.
• Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion – she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it.
• Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place – she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below.
• Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death.
• It’s dinnertime. Félicité comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It’s torture.
• To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he’d heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip.
• Then, just when Emma doesn’t think that things can possibly be more horrible, Félicité brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well.
• This is too much to handle – Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe’s carriage pass by the window. She passes out.
• Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman.
• Emma comes back from her faint briefly – Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again.
• Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots.
• Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row – like we said, a really long time.
• He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles’s old teacher, Dr. Larivière.
• Emma doesn’t say anything or give any indication of what’s causing all of this.
• By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed – she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses.
• Charles worries that she may have cancer.
• To make it even worse, there’s no money.

I’ve got myself so behind again, but am off this week so should be caught up soon.

Hard to see how it could get much worse, and yet I'm sure it will

Part Two, Chapter 14

• You have to feel bad for Charles. Life is not being particularly kind to him.
• First of all, he has to pay all kinds of bills, he owes his friend Homais for all the drugs he’s taken from the pharmacy for Emma.
• To top it all off, Monsieur Lheureux is on his case now. The merchant tries to pull a fast one over on the poor doctor, claiming that Emma ordered two trunks instead of one, and demanding payment for everything. Lheureux threatens to sue if Charles doesn’t pay up.
• The solution is not a solution after all: Lheureux agrees to accept a promissory note (a kind of fancy legal I.O.U. with interest) to be paid up six months later. Charles then has what he thinks is a brilliant idea – uh oh. He asks to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux, which he will pay plus interest after a year. Lheureux, of course, agrees.
• Lheureux stands to make quite a profit from Charles’s predicament. He hopes the doctor won’t be able to pay up, so he can get in even deeper debt. We are starting to worry…a lot.
• Everything is looking up for the shady Monsieur Lheureux. He’s feeling pretty good about himself.
• Charles, on the other hand, is feeling pretty darn bad, understandably. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever manage to pay back the merchant. The poor guy also feels guilty about worrying about money when he should be worrying about Emma full time.
• Emma slowly recovers from her shock.
• Winter arrives – it’s a particularly harsh year. As spring approaches, her days fall into a dull, monotonous pattern.
• Father Bournisien starts to visit Emma, thinking that it’s probably a good time for her to start praying.
• In her desperation, Emma takes great comfort in the priest’s visits. At the peak of her illness, she asks for Holy Communion; when she receives the Communion wafer, she imagines an over-the-top, super-romanticized vision of heaven, which she then clings to. This is fascinatingly similar to the way in which she clung to the memory of Léon when he left – clearly she’s using religion to fill the void left by romance.
• She resolves to become a saint.
• Father Bournisien is impressed by her zeal, albeit a little freaked out by it (he wonders if she’s going a little mad – he obviously just doesn’t know Emma that well). He has a variety of religious books sent to Yonville for Emma’s edification.
• Emma attempts to read this odd collection of texts (one title we liked particularly is The Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of Young People); she doesn’t really buy into all of them, but keeps gamely at them, believing herself to be the best Catholic ever.
• She puts her love for Rodolphe aside, and replaces it with an obsessive love of God, whom she addresses in the same way she used to address her lover. That seriously can’t be right.
• Emma is in full religious overdrive for the moment. She devotes her time to charity, and is so docile that even her acerbic mother-in-law can’t find a flaw in her. For the first time, she’s actually kind and gentle with Berthe.
• In general, Emma seems like she and the world are getting along fairly well for the first time. Even the other housewives of the town accept her again and come and visit.
• The Homais children and Justin are also frequent visitors. Justin, we learn, is nurturing an intense crush on Emma.
• Emma grows gradually more and more introspective. She stops receiving visitors, and even stops going to church. Father Bournisien keeps visiting, but he mostly just hangs out with Charles and Binet (who likes to fish close by), drinking cider and chatting.
• Homais, of course, has a suggestion. He tells Charles to take Emma to the opera in Rouen, where a famous tenor is performing. The pharmacist is pleasantly surprised to see that the priest doesn’t object; however, they quickly get into a fight about whether music is more or less moral than literature.
• Homais tries to involve Charles, who wants nothing to do with the argument.
• After the priest leaves, Homais again encourages Charles to take Emma to the opera. He brings it up with her, and insists that they go.
• The very next morning, the couple boards the Hirondelle and heads into Rouen. As usual, Homais bids them farewell, telling Emma she’ll be a hit in Rouen in her pretty dress.
• Upon arrival in Rouen, Charles rushes off to get tickets (which he fumbles, but eventually resolves), while Emma does some shopping. Before they know it, it’s time for the show to start.

I have finally caught up! So much has happened over the last few chapters. I'm particularly relieved to have made it through the leg amputation chapter; I was dreading that after reading people's comments.

I have to say, if Emma seems self-centred and foolish at times, Rodolphe comes off far far worse. Flaubert really hasn't given him any redeeming qualities whatsoever. He's pure cad!

I have some admiration for how intensely Emma throws herself into her fantasies. Her infatuation with religion is a craze, but there's something very human about it... she's so desperate to find some higher meaning and beauty in life.

And there's so much ongoing dramatic irony in the way Emma is undergoing all of these different psychological experiences while poor Charles carries on unawares, doing his oblivious best to keep her happy.

Regardless of whether or not the theatre is immoral, I am full of foreboding about the Bovarys' big opera trip. This novel is not a relaxing read.

By the way, I liked this sentence about Homais: The apothecary, who had nothing keeping him in Yonville, but who thought himself in duty bound never to stir from it, sighed as he watched them leave. Mind-forged manacles!

In some ways Homais strikes me as a little like Emma, because he has these occasional flights of imagination and grand ideas, like this most recent idea that Emma needs to go to the opera. And he wrote that silly newspaper article about how the town fair was like the Arabian Nights, and named his kids those crazy grandiose names. On the other hand his grand idea about Charles curing Hippolyte's clubfoot had absolutely disastrous consequences. He's like a small-town guy determined to be more than a small-town guy. But in reality he'll never leave. He's even more bound to village life than Emma is.

At least his wife is kind to Emma though! Her affair seems like a very badly kept secret; no wonder there's gossip.

I have caught up too. Thanks for the summaries and keeping the thread moving forward, really helpful.

I've struggled a bit with this book as it is so far from what I expected. But I think it's SO interesting.

I feel like you could transport Emma to so many modern situations - FOMO, feeling you have settled and yearning for what you cannot have. Then the transferring from one obsession to another. She does feel quite convincing as a character.

But practically no-one in the book is likeable, and the detailed description that was so charming when it was describing the wedding cake is a bit tedious when it's describing a civic occasion.

I'm fascinated to see where it goes from here. Will her religious fervour last or will she find a new obsession? What will happen when the shit hits the fan financially? Reading on with interest.

Agreed, Bishy.

I would describe it as an awful story, beautifully written.

I agree with you both! The characters are convincing, but not people I'd like to know in real life.

I did both the Tolstoy reads and loved them, and I'm enjoying this one less in terms of sheer reading pleasure; I think that's why!