nic chapters XIV-VIII

After Emma ended the affair with Rodolphe and began to see Leon again, the contrasts between both her lover became obvious and really stood out to me in this reading. While Rodolphe had total control of the situation and what he was doing with Emma, it is not difficult to see that Leon has no other intentions, and that his callowness is shown again and again through the form in which he is desperate to see Emma all the time, leaving his work and friends behind to constantly go after a woman who actually doesn’t know what she’s doing either. If in the affair with Rodolphe she had no control and “responsibilities”, here she is the one who is running the show. However, just as her former affair, Emma’s passion becomes obsessive, and even Leon can’t deal with her demands. Her hysterical moment after they cannot be together because Leon had to see Homais underlines her insanity and the decadent state she has whirl pooled into, and at that point she is already so full of debts that it seems like she can’t go down any deeper. The seemingly decent wife of the doctor has already been corrupted and at the rate that she is going, there seems to be no turning back.
When Emma is riding the carriage to Rouen a very peculiar (and I believe symbolic) character has joined the novel. It is the blind beggar who sings songs of innocence and animals while he is actually in a pitiful state. His situation reflects a lot of Emma’s condition, for as I stated earlier she may have appeared to be innocent and helpless in the past, but just as the beggars disease, all her morality has been eaten up by the terrible disease that is her desperation for the life she can’t have and the men she can’t have either.