Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovarysuch a wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said thatsmall pencil sketched by her that he had had framed in very “was quite good enough for the country.”large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green His mother approved of his economy, for she came to seecords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his him as formerly when there had been some violent row at herwool-work slippers.place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudicedHe came home late—at ten o’clock, at midnight sometimes. against her daughter-in-law. She thought “her ways too fineThen he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had for their position”; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappearedas “at a grand establishment,” and the amount ofgone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his coat todine more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-fivepeople he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptionsha had written, and, well pleased with himself, he taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought thecourses. She put her linen in order for her in the presses, andfinished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked meat. Emma put up with these lessons. Madame Bovary waspieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his waterbottle,and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored. exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings oflavish of them; and the words “daughter” and “mother” wereAs he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice tremblinghis handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that with anger.his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his In Madame Dubuc’s time the old woman felt that she wasface and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings still the favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemedcame untied during the night. He always wore thick boots to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment uponthat had two long creases over the instep running obliquely what was hers, and she watched her son’s happiness in sadtowards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people38