Characters Discussed

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Emma Bovary

Emma Bovary (boh-vah-REE), a sentimental young woman whose foolishly romantic ideas on life and love cause her to become dissatisfied with her humdrum husband and the circumstances of her married life. Her feelings of disillusionment lead her first into two desperate, hopeless love affairs and then to an agonizing and ugly death from arsenic poisoning. Filled with fiery, indefinite conceptions of love, which she is capable of translating only into gaudy bourgeois displays of materialism, she is unable to reconcile herself to a life of tedium as the wife of a country doctor. In her attempt to escape into a more exciting world of passion and dream, she drifts into shabby, sordid affairs with Rodolphe Bourlanger and Léon Dupuis. The first of these lovers, an older man, dominates the affair; the second, inexperienced and young, is dominated. Because Emma brings to both of these affairs little more than an insubstantial and frantic desire to escape her dull husband and the monotony of her life, the eventual collapse of her romantic dreams, the folly of her passionate surrender to passion and intrigue, and her death, brought on by false, empty pride, are inevitable.

Charles Bovary

Charles Bovary (shahrl), Emma’s well-meaning but docile and mediocre medical husband. An unimaginative clod without intelligence or insight, he is unable to understand, console, or satisfy the terrible needs of his wife. Every move he makes to become a more important figure in her sight is frustrated by his inadequacy as a lover and a doctor, for he is as much a failure in his practice as he is in his relations with Emma. Her suicide leaves him grief-stricken and financially ruined as the result of her extravagance. Soon after her death, he discovers in the secret drawer of her desk the love letters sent her by Rodolphe and Léon, and he learns of her infidelity for the first time. When he dies, the sum of twelve francs and seventy-five centimes is his only legacy to his small daughter.

Rodolphe Bourlanger

Rodolphe Bourlanger (roh-DOHLF bewr-lahn-ZHAY), Emma Bovary’s first lover. A well-to-do bachelor and the owner of the Château La Huchette, he is a shrewd, suave, and brittle man with considerable knowledge of women and a taste for intrigue. Sensing the relationship between Emma and her husband, he makes friends with the Bovarys, sends them gifts of venison and fowls, and invites them to the chateau. On the pretext of concern for Emma’s health, he suggests that they go riding together. He finds Emma so easy a conquest that after a short time he begins to neglect her, partly out of boredom, partly because he cannot see in himself the Byronic image Emma has created in her imagination; she never sees Rodolphe as the loutish, vulgar man he is. After he writes her a letter of farewell, on the pretext that he is going on a long journey, Emma suffers a serious attack of brain fever.

Léon Dupuis

Léon Dupuis (lay-OH[N] dew-PWEE ), a young law clerk infatuated by Emma Bovary but without the courage to declare himself or to possess her. With him, she indulges herself in a progressively lascivious manner in her attempt to capture the excitement and passion of the romantic love she desires. Léon, because he lacks depth and maturity, merely intensifies Emma’s growing estrangement from her everyday world. When Léon, who never realizes the encouragement Emma offers him, goes off to continue his studies in Paris, she is filled with rage, hate, and unfulfilled desire, and a short time later she turns to...

(This entire section contains 1087 words.)

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Rodolphe Bourlanger. After that affair, she meets Léon once more in Rouen, and they become lovers. Oppressed by debts, living only for sensation, and realizing that she is pulling Léon down to her own degraded level, Emma ends the affair by committing suicide.

Monsieur Lheureux

Monsieur Lheureux (lewr-REH), an unscrupulous, corrupt draper and moneylender who makes Emma the victim of his unsavory business deals by driving her deeper and deeper into debt. Her inability to repay the exorbitant loans he has made her in secret forces the issue of suicide upon her as her only escape from her baseless world.

Monsieur Homais

Monsieur Homais (oh-MAY), a chemist, presented in a masterpiece of ironic characterization. A speaker in clichés, the possessor of a wholly trite “Scientific Outlook” on society, he regards himself as a modern man and a thinker. His pomposity and astoundingly superficial ideals become one of the remarkable facets of the novel, as Flaubert sketches the hypocrisy and mediocrity of Charles Bovary’s friend. Homais epitomizes the small-town promoter, raconteur, and self-styled liberal.

Hippolyte Tautain

Hippolyte Tautain (ee-poh-LEET toh-TEH[N]), a mentally retarded, clubfooted boy operated on by Charles Bovary at the insistence of M. Homais, who wishes to bring greater glory to the region by proving the merits of a new surgical device. Bovary’s crude handling of the operation and the malpractice involved in the use of the device cause the boy to lose his leg. The episode provides Flaubert with an excellent commentary on both Homais and Bovary.

Théodore Rouault

Théodore Rouault (tay-oh-DOHR rew-AHL), Emma Bovary’s father, a farmer. Charles Bovary first meets Emma when he is summoned to set Rouault’s broken leg.

Berthe Bovary

Berthe Bovary (behrt), the neglected young daughter of Emma and Charles Bovary. Orphaned and left without an inheritance, she is sent to live with her father’s mother. When that woman dies, the child is turned over to the care of an aunt, who puts her to work in a cotton-spinning factory.

Captain Binet

Captain Binet (bee-NAY), the tax collector in the town of Yonville-l’Abbaye.

Justin

Justin (zhews-TA[N]), the assistant in the shop of Mr. Homais. Emma persuades her young admirer to admit her to the room where poisons are kept. There, before horrified Justin can stop her, she secures a quantity of arsenic and eats it.

Madame Veuve Lefrançois

Madame Veuve Lefrançois (vehv leh-frah[n]-SWAH), the proprietress of the inn in Yonville-l’Abbaye. Hippolyte Tautain is the hostler at her establishment.

Félicité

Félicité (fay-lee-see-TAY), the Bovarys’ maid.

Héloise Bovary

Héloise Bovary (ayl-WAHZ), Charles Bovary’s first wife, a woman much older than he, who had deceived the Bovarys as to the amount of property she owned. Her death following a severe hemorrhage frees Charles from his nagging, domineering wife, and soon afterward he marries young Emma Rouault.

Character Analysis

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Monsieur Binet

Monsieur Binet, the tax collector in Yonville, rarely engages in the town's social activities. Monsieur Homais describes him as “a dead fish” with “no imagination, no wit, nothing of what makes a man a social light.” He contrasts sharply with Emma when she encounters him one morning after visiting Boulanger’s estate. Emma seeks his assistance when she is on the verge of losing her home, but he declines to help her. Two village women observe through the window, suspecting Emma is “making advances to him.” This suspicion seems confirmed when Binet abruptly steps back, exclaiming, “What are you thinking of, Madame?” The women interpret this as a sign of Binet’s bravery.

Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger

Rodolphe Boulanger, a thirty-four-year-old country squire, is described as “cynical in temperament and keen of intellect.” He seduces Emma during a horseback ride in the woods, carefully manipulating her emotions. Upon their first meeting, he instantly grasps the issues in her marriage to Charles and identifies her vulnerability. Noting her starvation for passion and romantic words, he tells her that an uncontrollable force drew him to her. His ability to understand her plight and provide the romance and attention she craves leads her to fall in love with him.

His callous and superficial nature is revealed when he decides to abandon her once their affair becomes monotonous. He concludes that Emma, like all mistresses, loses her charm over time: “the charm of newness, slipping down little by little like a garment, revealed unclothed the eternal monotony of passion.”

Abbé Bournisien

Abbé Bournisien, the priest in Yonville, demonstrates his lack of insight when Emma approaches him, seeking support to resist her feelings for Léon and to explain her unhappiness. He insists that any woman with enough to eat and a warm fire in winter should be perfectly content. Due to his lack of understanding, Emma does not confide in him and turns away from religion as a source of solace.

Berthe Bovary

Berthe Bovary is the daughter of Charles and Emma Bovary.

Charles Bovary

From the start of the novel, Flaubert portrays Charles as dull, dim-witted, and graceless. The narrator observes that his conversation is “flat as the sidewalk of the street and the ideas of everyone he spoke to passed through it without exciting emotion, laughter, or contemplation.” Charles has few interests beyond his family. He shows no interest in theater or books and has never acquired skills like swimming or fencing that might make him an engaging companion or husband. His name reflects his “bovine,” cud-chewing personality.

Many of Charles’s patients in both Tostes and Yonville appreciate his unpretentious demeanor. They also value his sense of responsibility. However, his inability to master the complexities of his profession leads to a disastrous clubfoot operation, resulting in his patient needing a leg amputation.

Charles is deeply in love with Emma, and combined with his lack of willpower, she easily dominates his life. He overlooks her reckless spending and her interest in other men, which Emma rarely bothers to conceal. His lack of insight extends into their relationship, often leaving him clueless about her thoughts and feelings unless her health visibly declines. His lack of ambition and rural habits, paired with his weak character, frustrate and depress Emma. Despite this, Charles remains unwaveringly loyal to her, even after learning about her affairs with Rodolphe Boulanger and Léon Dupuis. His profound love for her ultimately leads to his downfall. Shortly after Emma’s suicide, Charles withers away and dies.

Monsieur Charles-Denis-Bartholomé Bovary

Charles’s father, Monsieur Bovary, was a former assistant surgeon-major. After being forced out of service, he married a wealthy woman to live comfortably. However, he failed at farming because he squandered his profits on food and drink. Eventually, Charles’s vain and boastful father became a bitter alcoholic, “disgusted with humanity” in his later years.

Madame Emma Bovary

Emma’s sensual nature is evident when Charles first meets her. While sewing, she pricks her fingers and sucks them, and later, she licks every drop of liquor from the bottom of a glass. Charles does not nurture this trait in her. Shortly after their marriage, she grows bored with their monotonous life together.

Dissatisfied with her life on the farm, Emma agrees to marry Charles, mistaking her desire for a more comfortable life for love. She believed she was in love with Charles before their marriage, but those feelings never truly developed. Soon after their wedding, she waits for a dramatic change to transform her life. When none occurs and she finds no fulfillment in their relationship, she begins to value material possessions. The narrator notes that she “confused, in her longing, the sensual appeals of luxury with the joys of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment.” Her desire for a luxurious life ultimately leads to her downfall.

Struggling to afford the lifestyle she believes she deserves, Emma seeks solace in the company of other men to fulfill her passionate desires. However, her idealized vision of love ruins her relationships, not only with her husband but also with her lovers. Disappointed by Charles's inability to meet her expectations of manhood, she fantasizes about finding lovers like those in the sentimental novels she reads. When her marriage fails to provide the passion she finds in these books, she wonders, “just what was meant, in real life, by the words felicity, passion and intoxication, which had seemed so beautiful” on the page.

Emma falls for Léon and Rodolphe because they seem better than Charles. However, neither can fulfill her romantic ideals, leading her to push both men away. Ultimately, she finds in adultery the same monotony she experiences in marriage. As she exhausts “every pleasure by wishing it to be too intense,” she succumbs to a “universal numbness.” Combined with her financial woes, this despair drives her to take her own life.

Madame Héloïse Bovary

Héloïse Bovary, Charles’s first wife, is a forty-five-year-old affluent widow when Charles marries her. Charles is dissatisfied with this woman, whom his mother chose for him, finding her unattractive and frail. She dominates the household and constantly complains about her health, which is indeed quite delicate. After her family loses its wealth and Charles’s parents accuse her of deceit, she falls ill and dies.

Madame Bovary

Mrs. Bovary, Charles’s mother, once adored her husband, which annoyed him. Initially, she was a joyful and loving woman, but as she confronted her husband’s infidelities and excesses, she became difficult, irritable, and anxious. She endured her frustration “in a mute stoicism.” Dissatisfied with her marriage, she doted on Charles, channeling all her unfulfilled ambitions into him.

She attempts to maintain control over Charles even after he reaches adulthood by selecting his wife. Her influence wanes, however, when Charles marries Emma, whom Madame Bovary deems “too refined in her airs for their financial position.” She also feels envious of Charles’s affection for Emma. To regain her dominance, she frequently visits the couple and continually criticizes Emma’s housekeeping.

Monsieur Léon Dupuis

Emma meets Léon Dupuis, a lawyer’s clerk, shortly after she and Charles move to Yonville. Léon shares Emma’s romantic sensibilities; his thoughts, like hers, are constantly “interweaving with fiction.” He confides in her that his heart “becomes involved” with the characters he reads about, as it “beats underneath their costumes.” Emma and Léon fuel each other’s romantic fantasies as they begin their affair. When they hold hands, “the past, the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were blended in the charm” of the moment.

Eventually, Léon attempts to resist Emma's overwhelming influence on his personality. However, his meek disposition enables her to dominate him, even as his love for her diminishes. Despite growing weary of her demands, he remains indecisive about their future, allowing her to control the timing and location of their meetings.

Félicité

Félicité, who is fourteen when she begins working as Emma's maid, is an orphan with "a sweet face." Emma endeavors to transform her into a ladies' maid, and Félicité complies without hesitation. Nevertheless, after Emma's death, she steals most of Emma's clothes.

Monsieur Homais

Monsieur Homais, the pharmacist, is the Bovarys' neighbor. The self-important Homais often lectures about religion, society, and human nature, which does not win him many friends. He conceals his illegal medical practices and treats Charles with extraordinary kindness to ensure Charles does not report him to the authorities. However, Charles is too oblivious to notice.

Justin

Justin, a young boy working in the pharmacy, falls deeply in love with Emma. His infatuation is so strong that he cannot refuse her request to access the cabinet where Monsieur Homais stores arsenic.

Madame Lefrançois

Madame Lefrançois, the widowed innkeeper at Yonville, frequently complains and gossips about her customers.

Monsieur Lhereux

Monsieur Lhereux, the linen draper in Yonville, encourages Emma's lavish spending habits through shrewd sales techniques. Initially "polite to the point of obsequiousness," Lhereux flatters his customers until he secures a sale. He persuades Emma to buy expensive items beyond her means by exploiting her desire for sophistication and offering credit. When Emma's debts accumulate, he demands payment without any remorse or sympathy for her predicament.

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