Madame Bovary: Part 3, Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Every Thursday morning, Emma takes the coach to Rouen to see Léon at a hotel. Léon is awed by Emma’s charm and refinement, and proud to be the lover of a real lady: “he admired the exaltation of her soul and the lace on her skirts.” She reminds him of every beautiful woman described in books. He feels that his soul is captured in her beauty. When they are together, they disguise their sexual longings with “displays of wonder.”

Emma takes the coach back Thursday night. On the way back to Yonville, the coach often passes a deranged beggar with horribly infected eyelids, who sings a pretty song about a young girl in love in springtime. Sometimes he pushes his upturned hat through the window, and the driver chases him away with a whip. Emma feels moved and disturbed by his odd singing.

One day, Charles tells Emma that he ran into her piano teacher, who told him that she has no student named Emma Bovary. He suggests that perhaps there is another piano teacher who has the same name. The next day, he finds a forged receipt for the piano lessons in his boots. From then on, Emma finds a new pleasure in lying.

One day, Lheureux sees Emma and Léon coming out of a hotel. Three days later, Lheureux comes to subtly blackmail her for the money she owes. She is broke, so he suggests that she sell an old cottage that once belonged to Charles’ father. She agrees, and he immediately finds her a buyer, though it is implied that the sum offered is significantly below the actual value of the property. Emma is delighted to have any money at all. She decides to pay off her debt to Lheureux, but he convinces her to keep her money and simply take out some more loans.

Emma uses most of the money to pay off three earlier bills, but one final bill comes to their house. Lheureux convinces Charles to sign two other bills for it, with steep interest. Charles asks his mother for some money, so the elder Madame Bovary inquires into Emma’s expenses, and is horrified by the indulgence and waste. Charles agrees to let his mother burn Emma’s power of attorney, but Emma convinces Charles to sign another.

Emma becomes extravagant in her efforts to dramatize her love with Léon, to draw as much pleasure from it as possible. One Thursday, she does not return to Yonville. Charles is desperate with worry, and after a sleepless night he comes to Rouen to look for her. After looking for her in every reasonable place she could be, he runs into her on the street. She tells him coldly that she spent the night at her piano teacher’s, and complains that his anxiety is stifling. From then on, she comes to see Léon at every whim. She even surprises him at his office, to his boss’s annoyance. She begins to criticize his appearance and his house and demands love poems. He is in thrall to her, and yields to all her requests.