Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovarylatest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the up at four o’clock; the women, poor angels, wore EnglishBois and the Opera. In Eugene Sue she studied descriptions point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniusesof furniture; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death atimaginary satisfaction for her own desires. Even at table she pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towardsthe forties married heiresses. In the private rooms ofhad her book by her, and turned over the pages while Charlesate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light ofreturned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personagesshe made comparisons. But the circle of which he was actresses. They were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambi-wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters andthe centre gradually widened round him, and the aureole that tious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence outside that ofhe bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lightingup her other dreams.having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world itall others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms,Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma’s was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. Theeyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turnedamid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as away from them. All her immediate surroundings, the wearisomecountry, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity ofdistinct pictures. Emma perceived only two or three that hidfrom her all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity.The world of ambassadors moved over polished floors had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eyeexistence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance thatin drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables coveredwith velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses fused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delightscould see, an immense land of joys and passions. She con-with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment.Then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particu-52