Madame Bovary Part 3, Ch. 1-5

1. genuflecting (page 229) : to touch the knee to the floor or ground especially in worship.

2. When Charles left Emma in Rouen for a day, Leon goes to visit her in her hotel room. He falls in love with her again, but she does not accept his love. He begs her to give him another chance and meet him the next day at a church. She arrives at the church intentionally late in hopes that she would not see him, but when she did she gave him a letter that told him how she felt about him. He decides not to read it and the two of them take a tour of the church and then go for a ride on the carriage where Leon rips up Emma's letter. They spent so much time in the carriage that Emma missed her opportunity to return to Yonville. When she does return to Yonville, she went to Homais' shop and found out about the fight between Homais and Justin, and also that Charles' father has died and his mother would be coming to stay with them while they mourn. Lheureux gives Charles another list of debts and Emma convinces him the best way to resolve it is to go to Rouen and have Leon help them with the paperwork. While in Rouen the two of them make love to each other and take a romantic boat ride, apparently the same boat that Rodolphe had been on the night before. When Emma again returns to Yonville, Leon pays her many visits and Emma convinces Charles to let her take piano lessons in Rouen so that she can sneak away to see her lover. Charles nearly discovers the affair when he encounters Emma's piano teacher and the teacher has no idea who Emma is. Emma fakes receipts from the lesson to prove his suspicions otherwise. On the way to and from Rouen Emma meets a blind beggar who sings her a song that terrifies her. Charles' mother again comes to visit to help them take care of financial trouble, and burns Emma's power over the money. Emma is seeing Leon whatever chance she gets, but he starts to get annoyed with the fact that she wants to spend so much time with him.

3. In this section, Emma again tries to compare her relationships to those in the romantic novels she reads. This time, it is Leon instead of Charles. She and Leon pretend that they are characters in these novels, however, in real life their relationship is superficial. They think that their relationship is based off of common interests, when really they are just telling each other whatever they think the other one wants to hear. Eventually, they discover this and become annoyed with each other. Emma feels the need to then spend even more money to make up for her loss. I find that Flaubert is trying to show his readers that as Emma gains more control over Charles' money her morals are spinning even more out of control. She is officially corrupted, Charles cannot understand his wifes' behavior but he continues to stick by her even when she is self-destructing. At first, I thought that Flaubert was thinking that she was merely stuck in the Bourgeousie life, but now I think that he is almost mocking the fact that she is middle class and she cannot get out of it despite her best efforts to purchase expensive material things.

4. a) Charles is confused by his wife's behavior, and even he is beginning to see that something is not right, but yet, why doesn't he take action on his suspicions or control Emma's spending?

b) It seems to me that the same thing that happened in her relationship with Rodolphe is happening with Leon, is Flaubert trying to suggest that all relationships end in self-destruction or corruption?

c) Since Emma was contemplating Charles' father's estate, where is the older Madame Bovary going to stay?