What happens in Part Two, Chapter 6 of Madame Bovary?
The annual agricultural show arrives in Yonville, turning the town square into a vibrant display of civic pride. Officials gather on a wooden platform while farmers showcase their livestock, and prizes are awarded for the best manure and finest fleece. Amid this peculiar event, Rodolphe Boulanger pulls Emma away from the crowd and leads her to the vacant council chamber above, where they watch the scene unfold through an open window. He begins his seduction with practiced ease—talking about fate, kindred spirits, and the struggles that sensitive individuals face in provincial life. His words are bold and calculated; he has used this approach before and knows precisely where it leads. Flaubert weaves Rodolphe's soft declarations with the loud speech of councillor Lieuvain below, creating a clash between discussions of agricultural progress and Rodolphe's hushed compliments. Emma, feeling bored, restless, and yearning for something she can't quite identify, listens attentively. By the end of the chapter, she hasn't fully given in, but the gap between her and that surrender has narrowed significantly. The show concludes; the crowd disperses; the bunting is taken down. Yonville reverts to its dull, ordinary self, and Emma takes Rodolphe's words home, like a splinter she can’t help but keep pressing.
Analysis
Flaubert's brilliance here lies in his structure: the comices agricoles sequence stands out as one of literature's great moments because it blurs the line between the sublime and the ridiculous. The intercut montage—Rodolphe's seductive rhetoric paired with Lieuvain's prize-giving speech—feels ahead of its time, revealing both styles as empty performances. The language of romantic passion and that of civic virtue both fall short of their claims; they are merely scripts delivered for effect. Through Flaubert's free indirect discourse, we experience Emma's vulnerability while also observing Rodolphe as he carefully chooses his words. The irony isn't cruel for the sake of cruelty; it's precise, almost surgical.
The window serves as a recurring motif that Flaubert has woven in since Emma's time in the convent: she's always on the brink, gazing out at a life she believes is more fulfilling than her own. Here, the window presents the scene below like a painting—beautiful, distant, and unreal—while the genuine seduction unfolds in the dim room behind her.
The tone shifts frequently. The prose sometimes swells into lyrical sympathy for Emma's desires, only to be interrupted by a bureaucratic drone. This back-and-forth exemplifies Flaubert's signature rejection of sentimentality: he prevents the reader from settling into either mockery or pity. The chapter also propels the novel's main argument about language itself—that words, particularly those tied to desire and idealism, are perilously disconnected from any reliable meaning.
Key quotes from Part Two, Chapter 6
“Rodolphe had drawn closer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly: 'Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn?'”
Rodolphe deploys his seduction script at the window as the agricultural councillor drones on below, the juxtaposition exposing both speeches as pure performance.
“'Manure!' shouted the president. Rodolphe did not answer. They looked at each other; and as they did so, a sweet pain, as it were, made her lips tremble.”
Flaubert's most celebrated ironic cut: the word 'manure' interrupts the charged silence between Emma and Rodolphe, collapsing romantic convention and agricultural farce into a single devastating image.
“She was tired of trying to love him, and all her efforts to make herself love him had only served to make her feel how impossible it was.”
In a moment of free indirect discourse, Emma's disillusionment with Charles crystallises, making her vulnerability to Rodolphe's flattery psychologically legible rather than merely pathetic.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Part Two, Chapter 6
- comices agricoles
- The French term for an agricultural show or county fair at which farmers compete for prizes; the backdrop for Rodolphe's seduction of Emma in the famous ironic scene.