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Madame Bovary1

at once, with great thunderclaps and flashes of lightning; it was like a storm bursting upon life from the sky, uprooting it, overwhelming the will and sweeping the heart into the abyss (p. 87). This passage illustrates Flaubert’s opinion that romance novels have clouded her mind and shaped her expectations of how love must enter her life. If love does not occur in this manner, then it cannot be called love. Shortly after Leon departs for Paris, Emma meets Rodolphe. When he sees her for the first time he thinks to himself: “And she’s bored! She wishes she could live in town and dance the polka every night. Poor woman! She’s gasping for love like a carp gasping for water on a kitchen table. A few sweet words and she’d adore me, I’m sure of it! She’d be affectionate, charming…. Yes, but how could I get rid of her later?” (p. 113). Emma has dreamed of hearing these words her entire life. After they have started their affair, Flaubert illustrates the humor of romance novels by Emma saying: ‘I have a lover! I have a lover!’ and the thought gave her a delicious thrill, as though she were beginning a second puberty. At last she was going to possess the joys of love, that fever of happiness she had despaired of ever knowing. She was entering a marvelous realm in which everything would be passion, ecstasy and rapture…” (p. 140). Rodolphe begins to “treat her coarsely, without consideration” (p. 165). Ironically, this is the same way that Emma treats Charles. Eventually, Emma begs Rodolphe to take her away. He agrees because “he lost his head” (p. 167). On the day they were to leave, Emma receives a letter explaining why he was not running away with her. This letter causes her to become ill. “Sometime her heart would pain her, then it would be her chest…” (p. 182). Only after she forces Rodolphe from her m...

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