Day Forty-One

5/11

The Book: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

ISBN: 978-0-7607-9345-9

Suggested By: Brandon Shuler

Where: Home

When: 10:30-

Music: Dave Brubeck Quartet

Company: Alone

Pages: 56 - 111(55)

The Lead In: Inventory at work tonight, so am dreading the staying up late, and, of course, I open Tuesday. Good deal. So am reading during lunch break. Ah, Emma, what will you do today?

The 411 on the 55: Emma begins to show signs of mental distress, fluctuating wildly. A visit from her father doesn’t help her. After trying everything, Charles decides they should move. Right before moving, there is a telling scene. Emma reaches into one of her drawers and gets jabbed by something. It is her wedding bouquet. In anger, she throws it into the fire. The next sentence, she is pregnant.

They move and the first night there, Emma meets a new friend, a clerk, Leon. He talks about poetry, Paris, singing, etc. There is foreshadowing. Soon after, Emma has her child, a girl. Later, when going to visit her daughter (at the nurse’s house), Leon walks with her, holding her arm. What a hooker.

After weeks of flirting, Emma decides she is in love with Leon, but she cannot have him so she begins to waste away. She goes to the priest to come up with a solution, but he is so distracted she gives up. Coming home angry, she is bothered by Berthe and pushes her onto the ground where she cuts her cheek. Emma plays it off, but thinks “how ugly this child is!” (95). Soon after, Leon heads to Paris and Emma is sad. Forgive me if I am unmoved.

During a blood letting, a chemist is called in and he immediately spots Emma’s hotness. And he wants her, thinking of how to land her. And soon, Rodolphe (the chemist) begins flirting. 

Line of the Day: “Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it.” pg 89

The Fact on the Fiction: “Charles represents both the society and the personal characteristics that Emma detests. He is incompetent, stupid, and unimaginative.” Sparknotes