“‘Sooner or later it comes our way,’ repeated Rodolphe. ‘One day, just as we’re about to give up hope, it suddenly appears… You feel a need to tell a certain person everything about your life, to give him everything, sacrifice everything to him! You don’t have to explain anything to each other, you guess each other’s thoughts (Flaubert 124).” The idea of such a perfect love is hard for many to imagine, and nearly impossible to hold onto if found. In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the smooth Rodolphe falsely fulfills all of the romantic desires of the title character, only to leave her so desperate as to commit suicide rather than live without the love she naively believes is genuine. Emma Bovary wants only the perfection and passion of romance novels and plays, and finds all of what she longs for in the handsome face and charming words of Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger. Rodolphe’s determined nature and persuasive advances soon have the married Madame Bovary convinced that he could satiate her frantic desires for love, and she gets involved despite her morals, and her wedding ring. Rodolphe shows Emma the kind of love and excitement that she has so longed for, and on receiving such attentions from him she throws herself headlong into an adulterous affair. From the moment Emma lays eyes on this “gentleman in a green velvet frock coat” (110), she is intrigued by his appearance, which is so reminiscent of the perfect men she reads about in romance novels. “He was dressed with that incongruous mixture of casualness and refinement which the common people regard as evidence of an eccentric life, tumultuous passions, artistic inspirations, and always a certain contempt for social convention, which either fascinates or exasperates them” (119). His looks and his dress are what first capture Emma’s attention, though physical attraction, let alone love, are both far from her mind. The strong-willed Rodolphe’s thoughts are far less than honorable however, summed up in the line “He thought of her in the parlor, dressed as he had seen her, and then he undressed her” (113). A man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, he quickly determines to have Emma for himself, however temporary it may be. Soon after their first encounter “he immediately began to consider the strategic aspects of the undertaking” (113), highlighting his lacking morality and disregard for the sacredness of marriage. Having known Emma for merely ten minutes before his scheming and plotting begins, Rodolphe’s selfish and shallow qualities are thrown into sharp relief against the image he portrays to lure Emma. His initial decision that “‘the whole thing would take too much time” (113), being that an affair would require more work than he is willing to commit to, is shortly overshadowed by his sinful desires, due entirely to his superficial adoration of Emma’s beauty. He does not wish to trouble himself with the task of getting rid of Emma once he has satisfied his lust, but his is unable to convince himself to forget her, captivated by “’beautiful teeth, black eyes, dainty feet, and graceful as a Parisan!’” (113). The conversation between Emma and Rodolphe during the fair is where Emma first contemplates the possibility an affair, and only because Rodolphe’s silver tongue and “shrewd intelligence” (113) could convince anyone. The ideas that seep into her rather pure head soon get her reeling, Rodolphe filling her with amorous ideas and implications of his feelings for her. With subtle hints such as “’Oh, if only I’d had a goal in life! If only I’d met someone who could give me affection, someone who …Oh, I’d have poured out all the energy at my command, I’d have surmounted everything, broken down every obstacle!’” (123), he seems to encapsulate all of the ideals that Emma has sought after. While only such fanciful thoughts as this are what he tells Emma, he keeps to himself such things as his plans to rid herself of him “when the time comes.” While Emma is blind to his less than genuine intentions, they are highlighted in the narrator’s hidden commentary on Rodolphe’s person, and the perfection to which Flaubert juxtaposes Rodolphe’s “confession” of his feelings for Emma with the fair in the background, interrupting his silky compliments with ribbons and awards for such things as the best fertilizer or dairy cow, Flaubert cleverly inputs his own thoughts on Rodolphe’s false words. In seeking Emma, Rodolphe decides to “’use the direct approach- it works better than anything else’” (114), and this declaration soon rings true. The fact that “he had had a great many mistresses and was a good judge of women” (113), made it rather easy for him to “get her” (113), just as he imagines it will be. Rodolphe is an extremely selfish man, taking all manners “not too seriously” (110), making it is easy for him to cast Emma off once she has grown too committed to him. During their involvement however, she is happier than she could ever have hoped, a drastic change from the disappointments of her husband and her marriage, and it would appear Rodolphe has few complaints as well. Emma’s husband Charles remains completely oblivious of his wife’s sneaking around, only giving Emma further motivation to continue the passionate attachment. Emma would not have had the later affair with Leon had it not been for her first encounters with Rodolphe, and most likely would have settled for the unexciting love of her husband and given up hope on finding true romance. As a result of the affair she finds a newfound strength, a disregard for the bond of marriage, and an even stronger desire for love once she has it and loses it. Without the affair, she never would have known such happiness, and that the romance of novels can be found, although no man is as perfect as an author creates him to be. Rodolphe’s flaws were hidden by Emma’s desperation for someone to love her the way she has always imagined love to be, and his farewell letter, harsh and blunt, exemplifies the “brutal temperament” (113) that the narrator describes him as having. Emma, crushed by his cold sendoff, and devastated that the love she had believed to be so perfect has fallen apart before her eyes, is thrown into desperation and depression that is far worse than her previous life had been. Rodolphe reveals to Emma a world that she has only seen in the absurdly perfect and outlandish plots of romance novels and plays, only to cruelly strip her of it a short while later. His motivations are entirely dishonorable, and it is difficult to tell if he ever truly loved her, or was simply involved for his own satisfactions. She is devastated at such a harsh loss, for he had been all of the ideals she had ever wanted and never thought could be found. Emma’s unrealistic daydreams were encouraged by the ignorance of her husband, and her restlessness and longing disappears, brought to life by her adoration of Rodolphe. While she had previously been “gasping for love like a carp gasping for water on a kitchen table” (113), she soon becomes the picturesque mistress, her only flaw being that she becomes too attached to a man who is not looking for an attachment. The loss of such bliss is a heavy blow to Emma, and she finds herself even more desperate than she had been to begin with. Her desire for love is still as strong as ever, but after such mistreatment her view of love is sharply altered. It is as if the world had shattered with Rodolphe’s final letter, his words devoid of all warmth a shock to her heart. The conclusion of the novel finds Emma crushed by yet another affair gone wrong, coupled with financial troubles, and she turns to cyanide for escape. It is not until Emma is on her self-induced deathbed that Charles discovers his wife’s unfaithfulness, drastically altering his ideas of love and throwing him into a fit of despair that leads to his demise. Rodolphe’s hand in all of this is apparent, as it was the affair’s end that set off the events resulting in Emma’s suicide, with him washing his hands clean of the whole business with nothing but a formal letter. While Rodolphe is not introduced until halfway into the novel, his actions have a large hand in the novel’s conclusion. The significance and impact of Rodolphe is best seen when Emma finds his final letter, the devastation and confusion that rocks through her body shows his importance as a character. The romantic ideals he outwardly embodies are relative to this point as well, contrasting Emma’s dreamlike state with his cold abuse of her emotions and mind. Her view of love, and of the world for that matter, comes crashing down when Rodolphe ends their relationship, with Emma losing hope in true love and throwing her morals completely away when she begins a second affair with Leon. Her turning to suicide is a harsh solution to the obstacles keeping Emma from love, but her desperation and desire for it, albeit somewhat unrealistic in what she longs for, are too much to bear.
Works Cited Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Ed. Leo Bersani. Trans. Lowell Blair. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
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