“Mrs. Bovary” Flaubert in summary
The young physician Charles Bovary first saw Emma Ruo when he was summoned to the farm of her father who broke his leg. Emma had a blue wool dress with three frills. Her hair was black, smoothly combed in front on the straight parting, cheeks pink, eyes of large black eyes straight and open. Charles by this time was already married to the ugly and quarrelsome widow that his mother had been wedded to because of her dowry. A turning point for Papa Rouault was easy, but Charles continued to drive to the farm. The jealous wife found out that Mademoiselle Rouault had studied at the Ursuline monastery, that she “dances, knows geography, draws, embroider and strum on the piano.” No, that’s too much! “. She harassed her husband with reproaches.
However, soon the wife of Charles unexpectedly died. And after a while he married Emma. The mother-in-law treated the new daughter-in-law coldly. Emma became Madame Bovary and moved to the house of Charles in the town of
Once in her life something unusual
In the spring, the couple moved to Ionville, near Rouen. Emma had already waited for the baby by that time.
It was the land where the “talk is devoid of character, and the landscape is of a peculiar nature.” At one and the same hour in the central square, the miserable stagecoach “The Swallow” stopped, and his coachman handed out bundles of purchases to residents. At the same time, the whole city was brewing jam, storing for a year ahead. Everyone knew everything and gossiped about everything and everything. Bovary was introduced into the local community. The apothecary was Mr. Ome, whose face “did not express anything except narcissism”, a tissue merchant Mr. Leray, as well as a priest, a policeman, an innkeeper, a notary and several others. Against this backdrop, a twenty-year-old assistant to the notary, Leon Dupuis, stood out – blond, with curled eyelashes, timid and shy. He loved to read, painted watercolors and strumming the piano with one finger. Emma Bovary surprised his imagination. From the first conversation they felt in each other a soul mate. Both loved to talk about the sublime and suffered from loneliness and boredom.
Emma wanted a son, but a girl was born. She called her Bertha – that’s the name she heard at the ball at the Marquis. The girl was found a wet nurse. Life continued. Papa Ryo sent them a turkey in the spring. Sometimes my mother-in-law visited me, the bruised daughter-in-law for her extravagance. Only the society of Leon, with whom Emma often met at the party of the apothecary, brightened up her loneliness. The young man was already passionately in love with her, but did not know how to explain himself. “Emma seemed so virtuous, so impregnable that he could not even hope for a moment,” he did not suspect that Emma in the soul also longs for him. Finally, the notary assistant went to Paris to continue his education. After his departure, Emma fell into a black melancholy and despair. She was torn with bitterness and regret for the happiness that had not taken place. To somehow unwind, she bought the reins from Lera’s shop. She used to use his services. Leray was a dexterous, flattering and feline cunning man. He had long guessed Emma’s passion for beautiful things and willingly offered her purchases in debt, sending then cuts, then lace, then carpets, then scarves. Gradually, Emma was at the shopkeeper’s fair debt, which her husband did not suspect.
One day a landowner Rodolphe Boulanger came to see Charles. He himself was as healthy as an ox, and brought his servant to the examination. Emma immediately liked him. Unlike the timid Leone, the thirty-four-year old bachelor Rodolphe was experienced in dealing with women and self-confident. He found a way to Emma’s heart with the help of vague complaints about loneliness and misunderstanding. After a while she became his mistress. It happened on a horseback ride, which Rodolphe offered – as a means to correct the shaken health of Mrs. Bovary. Emma gave herself to Rodolphe in a forest hut, weak-willed, “hiding her face, all in tears.” But then the passion flared up in her, and the deliciously bold rendezvous became the meaning of her life. She attributed to the sunburnt, strong Rodolphe the heroic traits of her imaginary ideal. She demanded of him an oath in eternal love and self-sacrifice. Her feeling needed a romantic frame. She forced the wing, where they met at night, with vases of flowers. Did Rodolphe expensive gifts, which she bought from the same Lera secretly from her husband.
The more Emma was attached, the more Rodolphe cooled to it. She touched him, the little fan, with her cleanliness and innocence. But most of all he cherished his own peace. Relationship with Emma could damage his reputation. And she behaved too recklessly. And Rodolphe increasingly made her comments on this matter. Once he missed three dates in a row. Emma’s ego was hurt hurtfully. “She even wondered why she hated Charles so much, and would not it be better to try to love him anyway?” But Charles did not appreciate this return of the former feeling, her sacrificial impulse crashed, this plunged her into complete confusion, and then the apothecary and accidentally turned up poured oil on the fire. “
Apothecary Ome was listed in Jonvil as a champion of progress. He watched the new trends and even published in the newspaper “Rouen Light”. This time he was taken by the idea of making one new-fangled operation in Jonvil, about which he subtracted in a laudatory article. With this idea, Ome sat on Charles, persuading him and Emma that they did not take any chances. Chose and the victim – the groom, who had an inborn leg curvature. A whole conspiracy arose around the unfortunate man, and in the end he surrendered. After the operation, Emma met Charles in the doorway and rushed to his neck. In the evening, the couple made animated plans. And five days later the groom began to die. He started gangrene. I had to urgently call a “local celebrity” – a doctor who called everyone dumb and cut off the patient’s leg to the knee. Charles was in despair, and Emma was burning with shame. The poor lad’s groom heard the heart-rending cries of the whole town. She was once again convinced that her husband was an ordinary and insignificant person. That evening she met Rodolphe, “and from the hot kiss all their annoyance melted like a snowball.”
She began to dream of forever leaving Rodolphe, and finally began to talk about it seriously – after quarrels with her mother-in-law, who came to visit. She so insisted, so she implored that Rodolphe retreated and gave the floor to fulfill her request. A plan was drawn up. Emma did her best to escape. She secretly ordered Leray’s cloak, suitcases and various trifles for the road. But a blow was waiting for her: on the eve of his departure, Rodolphe changed his mind about taking on this burden. He firmly decided to break with Emma and sent her a farewell letter in a basket with apricots. In it, he also informed that he was leaving for a while.
… Forty-three days Charles did not depart from Emma, who began to have an inflammation of the brain. Only by the spring it became better. Now Emma was indifferent to everything in the world. She was carried away by charity and turned to God. Nothing seemed to revive her. In Rouen at that time toured famous tenor. And Charles, on the advice of an apothecary, decided to take his wife to the theater.
Emma listened to the opera Lucia de Lamermoor, forgetting about everything. The experience of the heroine seemed to her similar to her agony. She remembered her own wedding. “Oh, if at that time, when her beauty had not yet lost its original freshness, when the dirt of her married life had not yet adhered to her, when she had not yet given up on forbidden love, someone gave her her big, faithful heart, then virtue, tenderness, desire and a sense of duty would merge into it and from the height of such happiness she would not have fallen, and in the intermission she was waited for by an unexpected meeting with Leon, now he was practicing in Rouen, they had not seen each other for three years and had forgotten each other. Leon was no longer the same timid youth. “He decided that it was time to get along with this woman, “persuaded Madame Bovary to stay another day to listen to Lagardi again.
… Again Emma was loved, again she mercilessly deceived her husband and littered money. Every Thursday she went to Rouen, where she supposedly took music lessons, and herself met at the hotel with Leon. Now she acted like a sophisticated woman, and Leon was completely in her power. Meanwhile, the cunning Leroy began to persistently remind us of debts. A huge amount has accumulated on signed bills. Bovary threatened inventory of property. The horror of such an outcome could not be imagined. Emma rushed to Leon, but her lover was cowardly and cowardly. He was already so scared that Emma too often comes to him right at the office. And he did not help her. Neither the notary, nor the tax inspector, she also did not find sympathy. Then it dawned on her – Rodolphe! After all, he returned to his estate for a long time. And he is rich. But her former hero, initially pleasantly surprised by her appearance,
Emma left him, feeling that she was going crazy. With difficulty she reached the pharmacy, crept upstairs, where the poisons were stored, found a jar of arsenic and immediately swallowed the powder…
She died in a few days in terrible agony. Charles could not believe her death. He was completely ruined and heartbroken. The final blow was for him that he found the letters of Rodolphe and Leon. He went down, overgrown, untidy, he wandered along the paths and cried sobs. Soon he also died, right on the bench in the garden, clutching a strand of Emmy hair in his hand. Little Bertha was first brought up by Charles’s mother, and after her death – an elderly aunt. Papa Ruo broke the paralysis. There was no money for Bertha, and she had to go to the spinning mill.
Leon soon after the death of Emma successfully married. Leray opened a new store. The apothecary received the Order of the Legion of Honor, which he had long dreamed of. All of them are very successful.
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