Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertworld and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice asshop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have she stitched away.opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town,usually come to us only through translation in books. But and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she alwaysshe knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the goodthe milking, the ploughs.lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of herAccustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary,to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the dies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage,work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted la-sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches,vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight,by ruins.She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and nightingales in shady groves, “gentlemen” brave as lions, gentleshe rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediatedesires of her heart, being of a temperament more senti-and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, atas lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed,mental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books fromAt the convent there was an old maid who came for a week old lending libraries.each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, becauseshe belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined torical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and min-Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with his-by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of strels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house,the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade ofthem before going back to her work. The girls often slipped pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin inout from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his33