Mme. Bovary Ch. 5: Shocking Discoveries

Though a brief chapter, one upsetting discovery leads to an unsettling realization.

Upon moving into Charles' home, Emma and Charles peruse around the house, taking in the possibility and landscape.

Emma went up to the bedrooms. The first was empty; in the second, the conjugal chamber, a mahogany bed stood in an alcove hung with red draperies. - On the desk near the window, standing in a decanter and tied with white satin ribbon, was a bouquet of orange blossoms - a bride's bouquet: the other bride's bouquet! (Flaubert, 36).

How uncomfortable!

Mme. Bovary #1 left a lingering presence.  This reminds Emma that she is not Charles' first wife.

Charles noticed, picked it up, and took it to the attic; and as her boxes and bags were brought up and placed around her, she sat in an armchair and thought of her own bridal bouquet, which was packed in one of those very boxes, wondering what would be done with it if she were to die. (Flaubert, 37).

I don't think Emma is so much worried about her mortality as she is her replace-ability. Would she be remembered and mourned over properly if she were to die? Or quickly forgotten, her belongings stuffed in an attic along with her memory?

As a reader, we know that Charles is much more infatuated with Emma than he ever was with his first wife, but Emma would hardly be able to know that. Despite his doting on her and being ever-so affectionate, the way Charles treated his first wife's death gives cause for moral scrutiny.

Still, the last paragraph of the chapter very abruptly reveals Emma's definite sentiments.

Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion." and "rapture" - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books. (Flaubert, 39). 

Emma is completely indifferent to her marriage! Her ideas of star-struck love and its passionate urgency fell short of the mark with Charles, and it seems that she has quite submitted to this reality with utter capitulation.