7.38 Flaubert — Madame Bovary III — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the chapter of Emma Bovary's death, one of the most famous and most terrible scenes in French literature. Follow Flaubert's refusal to soften anything: the money, the poison and the agony are described as exactly as the furniture. Understand how the end of the novel brings back its beginnings: Rodolphe and the show, the convent's religion, and the blind man's song. Discuss the novel as a whole and its judgement on romantic dreams. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Eh bien !… je suis ruinée, Rodolphe ! Tu vas me prêter trois mille francs ! Well then! I am ruined, Rodolphe! You are going to lend me three thousand francs! Quand Charles, bouleversé par la nouvelle de la saisie, était rentré à la maison, Emma venait d’en sortir. When Charles, shattered by the news of the seizure, had come home, Emma had just gone out. comme les blessés, en agonisant, sentent l’existence qui s’en va par leur plaie qui saigne. as the wounded, in their death throes, feel life ebbing away through their bleeding wound. Puis elle s’en retourna subitement apaisée, et presque dans la sérénité d’un devoir accompli. Then she went back, suddenly calmed, and almost in the serenity of a duty done. comme au dégoût d’un autre poison plus fort qui lui remontait à la bouche. as if sickened by another, stronger poison rising to her mouth. et s’abandonner à la miséricorde divine. and abandon herself to divine mercy. Prerequisites : 7.37 — this reading completes 7.36 Reading and 7.37 Reading . Since the show, Emma has been Rodolphe's mistress, been abandoned by him on the eve of their planned flight, fallen ill, taken a second lover, Léon , in Rouen, and run up enormous debts with the shopkeeper Lheureux. A court order has arrived: everything she owns is to be seized. About this text Note: this text contains a death by poison. Chapter eight of the third part tells the last day of Emma's life. She goes to Rodolphe, now three years apart from her, to ask for three thousand francs. He refuses. She leaves his château in a state close to madness, runs to the pharmacy of Homais, makes the assistant Justin open the room where the poisons are kept, and swallows arsenic. Then the poison does its work, slowly, while Charles, who has understood nothing for years, tries to save her. This lesson gives about 3,500 words from the chapter, about two thirds of it. Omitted passages, marked […] , include the first part of the conversation with Rodolphe, the night of Charles's despair and the arrival of the doctors. The text is that of the Œuvres complètes published in Paris by Louis Conard in 1910, as transcribed in French Wikisource. Reading the death of Emma The money. Rodolphe answers Je ne les ai pas twice. The narrator adds that he is not lying: had he had the money, he might have given it. Emma's furious list of his luxuries, the gun, the clock, the whips, the cufflinks, is the only time in the novel she sees a man as he is. The poison. Flaubert describes the arsenic with medical precision: the taste of ink, the white gravel in the basin, the blue face, the cold rising from the feet. His father was chief surgeon at the hospital in Rouen, and he consulted medical books while writing this chapter. The exactness refuses the romantic death Emma imagined: c'est bien peu de chose, la mort , she thinks at first. The last rites. The priest anoints her eyes, nostrils, mouth, hands and feet, and each anointing names a sin: the eyes that coveted luxury, the mouth that lied. Emma kisses the crucifix with le plus grand baiser d'amour qu'elle eût jamais donné , and the religion of the convent in 7.36 Reading returns at the end as one more emotion. The blind man. All through the third part, a blind beggar with a ruined face has sung a love song on the road to Rouen. He sings it now under her window, and Emma dies laughing horribly. The song's last line, about a short skirt blown away by the wind, ends her life with a vulgar joke. Reading it a second time, part by part At Rodolphe's. Emma walks to La Huchette and finds Rodolphe by the fire. She is tender, then cries, then asks for three thousand francs. He refuses. Her anger. She points to his expensive possessions and throws his cufflinks against the wall; she reminds him of his promises and his letter. The walk back. Outside, she almost loses her mind: the ground moves, balls of fire burst with Rodolphe's face. Then, in a transport d'héroïsme , she runs to the pharmacy. The arsenic. She asks Justin for the key of the capharnaüm , the storeroom, takes the blue jar and eats the white powder with her hand. The agony. At home she writes a letter and lies down. The poison begins: thirst, nausea, cold, convulsions. Charles reads the letter and understands. Berthe. Emma asks for her little daughter, who is frightened by her face and has to be taken away. The end. The priest gives the last rites; Emma seems to recover, asks for her mirror, and weeps. As she dies, the blind man sings under the window. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Madame Bovary As she walked she asked herself: "What shall I say? Where shall I begin?" And as she went on, she recognised the bushes, the trees, the sea rushes on the hill, the chateau over there. She found herself back among the sensations of her first love, and her poor, crushed heart swelled lovingly in them. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the buds onto the grass. She went in, as before, by the little gate of the park, then came to the main courtyard, which was lined by a double row of thick lime trees. They swayed their long branches, whistling. The dogs in the kennel all barked, and the noise of their voices rang out without anyone appearing. She climbed the wide