Soon, he moves to Paris to finish his law degree, and she languishes in his absence. She and Léon fall in love, but Emma holds him at bay. They quickly meet the town’s small cast of characters, who bore Emma – all except Léon, a dreamy clerk who shares her interest in sentimental discussions of music and literature. Around that time, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to girl named Berthe.Įmma and Charles move to Yonville, a little farming town near Rouen. She becomes thin and listless, and Charles decides to move them to a new town in hopes of curing Emma’s malaise.

When she and Charles attend a dazzling ball, Emma’s longings are sharpened and intensified. Though he is kind, loving, and moderately successful in his profession, she feels that he is not an adequate husband, and spends her days dreaming of a better life – an elegant, refined, exciting life. She does not feel anything like the love described in her favorite romance novels, and she blames Charles’s bad looks and dull conversation. Charles adores his new wife, but Emma is soon bored and disappointed. Not long after, Charles’s wife dies of a nervous ailment, and within a year Charles and Emma are married. During his visit, Charles is enchanted by the man’s daughter, a beautiful, elegant girl named Emma.

One night, he receives a call to set a man’s broken leg.

His solicitous mother finds him a wealthy middle-aged wife named Madame Dubuc, and the couple move to a small town called Tostes, where Charles begins to practice medicine. After struggling though primary school and a series of courses in medicine that he finds inscrutable, Charles passes his exams and becomes a doctor. The novel begins by introducing us to a teenaged Charles, awkward, mild, dull, and studious.

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