Madame Bovary: Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

One winter Sunday, the Bovarys, the Homais family, and the clerk go to visit a half-built flax-mill. Emma takes the opportunity to mentally compare Charles’ dull, sluggish appearance to Léon’s lovely, refined one. Later that night, she thinks long and hard about the contrast. She can’t stop thinking about Léon and his many charms. She becomes fully aware for the first time of his love for her, and the realization fills her with both bliss and bitter regret. She had not attended the Sunday soirée at the Homais house, and she is pleased to learn from Charles that Léon left early.

The next day, Emma has a visit from Lheureux, the draper (or wholesaler), who offers to bring her any goods she might need. He offers her various pretty things, and explains that she would not have to pay right then. He even offers her a loan. She coldly declines, but he chatters pleasantly about Charles’s patients and quietly leaves, promising to return.

Léon visits Emma, but the awkwardness of their situation leaves them with little to say. She is quietly enjoying his admiration, while he wonders whether she is displeased with him. She tells Léon that she no longer has time for music, since she must take care of her husband, child, and home. From that moment on, Emma really does put all her energies into homemaking. She takes Berthe from the wet nurse, and displays the child to all her visitors like a mother in a book. She becomes an attentive and conscientious wife. Her performance makes Léon lose all hope of a romantic relationship with her, but it makes him love her all the more, in a worshipful way. Emma becomes even paler and thinner, like an angel of mercy. Her sad, gentle exterior makes her widely admired in town.

Underneath, though, Emma is miserable and angry, and “filled with lust” for Léon. Her pleasure in her purity is tempered by “the cravings of the flesh, the yearning for money, and the melancholia of passion.” She becomes irritable with her household and angry with Charles for thinking her happy. She is tired of pretending, and wishes she could elope with the clerk, but the thought fills her with dread.