Larissa Fernandez's comment on pgs. 59 - 130

At this point of the novel, the reader begins to get a better image of what Emma is actually like. She is shown as materialistic when she laments the fact that they are not spending their honeymoon in a higher class place. She rejects the true love of Charles and seems a lot more passionate about going to the Marquis d’Andervilliers’ ball. In fact, at the ball she looks down on Charles for his unsophisticated manners, and is clearly embarrassed of being his wife. She is so clueless that she regards a simple dance with the viscount as an exciting romantic happening. This shows her desperation, which results from her extreme boredom, and eventually leads to her being physically ill and having to move to another town. At the town, while Charles and Monsieur Homais discuss important subjects like medicine, Emma is lucky and finds Leon, with whom she can discuss trivial and silly things. Her boredom comes to an end, and she is hopeful once again that her life will have some excitement. She is involved in a dilemma, though, between being a good housewife and mother to her baby Berthe, or following her desires and succumbing to her passions with Leon. Her dropping Berthe is symbolic because it foreshadows what path Emma will follow: probably, adultery. Meeting the man who can loan her money is also foreshadowing that maybe at some later point at the novel Emma may need help to fix something she did wrong. I think that the only thing that stopped her from doing something already is the fact that Leon has to travel.