HAUBERT
59
The unresponsiveness of Emma's environment to her dreams of
glamor produces the "symptoms" which give her a deceptively com–
plex psychology and obscure the highly original thinness of her char–
acter. I'm thinking especially of two agitated but empty periods of
her life: the year and a half between the ball at la Vaubyessard and
the Bovarys' decision to leave Tostes, and the time between Emma's
realization that Leon loves her and Leon's departure from Yonville.
At the beginning of each section, something thrilling has happened;
at the end of both, we see Emma in a kind of catatonic stupor. But
nothing happens in between; her sickness is purely imaginary. The
excitement she felt at la Vaubyessard keeps her busy for a while: she
dreams of Paris and even begins to buy the clothes and luxury objects
she has seen in the fashion magazines. But the vulgarity of Charles
and of Tostes debases and trivializes these fragments from a more
glamorous world, and we watch Emma slowly sink into discouraged
passivity. She abandons music, drawing and reading (" - I've read
everything, she would say"), stares vacantly out of the window at the
uneventful life on the streets of Tostes, becomes capricious, develops
palpitations and a dry cough and remains "without speaking, with–
out moving" after equally inexplicable outbursts of feverish talk.
This instability is even more marked during the period following her
discovery of Leon's love. Her immediate reaction is a voluptuous self–
satisfaction which she enjoys by curious self-denials: she admires her
economy in refusing the scarves and slippers Lheureux tempts her
with, and she exasperates Leon by suddenly playing the role of the
devoted wife. "Full of covetous desires, of rage, of hatred," hoping for
some catastrophe that would reveal her love to Leon, but held back
by "laziness or terror," she consoles herself by taking "resigned poses"
in front of a mirror and congratulating herself on her virtue. But the
strain is too much, and instead of seeking an escape from her suf–
fering, she forces herself to think of it, "arousing herself with her
pain and looking everywhere for opportunities to suffer." She aban–
dons herself to wild adulterous fantasies, blames Charles for all her
unhappiness and wishes that he would beat her so that she might hate
him more intensely. When she thinks of running away with Leon,
"a vague abyss, full of obscurity, opened in her soul," and she finally
seeks help from the town priest, who has no idea what she's talking
