SOURCE: "Flaubert's Madame Bovary," in Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, pp. 233-367.

In the following excerpt, Tanner links Emma Bovary's vague but persistent mental unease and unhappiness with her male-defined and largely superfluous role in society. He then examines "why Emma's story should start with Charles Bovary 's somewhat inauspicious entry into a schoolroom" and connects this scene with the larger theme of language and meaning in the novel.

Emma Bovary and Abbey Bournisien.

The Fog in Emma Bovary's Head

"Ah yes!" returned Félicité. "You're like old Guérin's daughter, the fisherman at Le Pollet, that I knew at Dieppe before I came to you. She was that wretched, you'd think to see her standing in the doorway there was a funeral pall hung up over the door. It seems she'd got a soft of fog in her head, the...