Emma-Homais

Until Monsieur Flaubert's recent telling of her story, Emma Bovary was somewhat of a mystery to myself and to the people of Yonville. Her life was shrouded in such secrecy that even her husband knew nothing of her affairs or her extravagant spending. Before her death, debauched and defunded, Emma had reached an incredible low, begging her former lover for a loan just to keep her afloat. I feel grateful that poor Charles was not alive to read this book, as it may have upset his perfect image of his wife. No doubt, Emma was beautiful, captivating in fact, and some may feel inclined to pity her, but "...Emma must be judged, no matter how much sympathy she arouses" (Goodwin 112). Charles, too soft to see the hideous defects of his beloved wife, could never understand this necessary condemnation.
I know little of Emma's life with Charles in Tostes; he had had another wife before her but she died shortly before his marriage to Emma. They moved to Yonville during Emma's pregnancy with little Berthe (bless her wretched soul), and seemed to adjust quite nicely to the unique cultural and intellectual environment of the lovely town. Emma struggled for quite some time to keep herself from her natural depravity, which may in fact have offended some readers (James 61). Finally she did give in to her desires and had relations with one Rodolphe, a wealthy landowner who apparently had a history of seducing women. Of course, he is not at fault, for it seems obvious that Emma's sick fantasies were more responsible for this affair than Rodolphe's understandable passions. According to Flaubert, Emma stole from her room to meet Rodolphe in the night, without Charles having any clue. The poor man was not blessed with the intellect and deductive skills as, say, myself, winner of the Cross of the Legion of Honor. Throughout her relations with Rodolphe, Emma had frequent mood swings and often the wretch would crawl back to her unsuspecting husband, posing as the ideal wife and mother. In reality, Berthe meant nothing to her. Berthe could not have been named for a poet or a princess, such as I would have chosen for her, but for a promiscuous lady of style whom Emma had noticed while at a ball. Emma Bovary seems to have been entirely selfish, a quality one can find in most Romantics (Tillet 3) that I find most detestable. Unlike myself, she gives no thought to anyone but herself, is satisfied only by her own insignificant achievements, and cannot recognize suffering in others. Continuing on, Emma finds herself alone again after Rodolphe pronounces her to have become mundane and demanding. After a brief period of relative peace in the Bovary home, Emma and Charles met Leon, a boy who stayed in Yonville at my house for a time, at an opera in Rouen. I had suspected that Leon and Emma had experienced some feelings for one another and Flaubert never gave me credit for suggesting to the boy that he might go to Paris to escape possible scandal. Flaubert wrote as if Leon wanted to leave for Paris, like he was not finding enough intellectual stimulation in Yonville. Nevertheless, they found one another once more, and quickly "shacked up" as the young folk would call it these days, at the Hotel-de-Bolougne, as Emma feigned piano lessons so that her poor husband could pay for her frivolity and adultery. To think I kept that boy in my house!
As I expressed above, Emma became so wasteful and so wrapped in her own sensations and emotions, she found herself in both a financial and emotional slump. I strongly believe that "...Emma's greatest failure has been...her inability to distinguish between the amorous and the economic" (Goodwin 113). She so intertwined her financial extravagance with her sexual promiscuity that she lost both, as well as the few positive things in her life. I would like to believe that had she come to me instead of to that silly boy Justin when she was desperate for arsenic, she and Charles would be alive today. My compassion and understanding are unparalleled, and I'm being modest when I say I have a bit of influence over people. Emma, in her thoughtless desperation, shunned the only people who could help her and did not even do anything to help herself! She was the type of woman who impedes the progress of an up-and-coming town like Yonville, and I appreciate that her story is now available to prevent other ridiculous women from making the same mistakes.

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