Whether God or the taxman, someone gets paid. Emma stands for the cost of immoral actions. The author uses Emma as the symbol of excess and the outcome as predictions of the future. She had the slippers on all the time!) The side stories and political, religious and social commentary retell the trysts and errors that Emma commits on her road to ruin. The effect of her never finding what she wants costs him all that his small medical practice provided. Until the end, his love for her, the very love she sought in every wrong situation, honored her and maintained his belief in her perfection, even as her old love letters fell from his hands. In the end he drinks with one of her lovers proclaiming no bad feelings toward the man. Her doting husband loves and trusts her, too simple a man to suspect her betrayals. She has all the "things" she needs, but belives she is without love.
On the surface you can read a tale of a "Scarlet O'Hara" in reverse, a woman with everything who longs for a perfect love in a perfect and handsome man. Ah the turn of the screw, the turn of the phrase.
The 'teacher' approaches poor Emma's suffering husband for a year of "lessons" not taken.
At the end all the tragic, tortured revelations, one glaring irony has a woman coming to collect a debt for Emma's lessons (lessons never taken but used as a cover up to her husband). So well written, you love and pity Emma, feel sorry for Charles and loathe the symbolic money lender for giving her the ability to do it all. Hours and hours of listening feeling like I was watching Emma coming apart and taking down the entire cast with her. Divina Porter gave so much life to Madame Bovary, and of course with no small contribution by its author, the book has a permanent position in my mental book shelf.
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