s of understanding her
point of view will be neglected. But her value is another matter; as
to that Flaubert never has an instant's illusion, he always knows her
to be worthless.

He knows it without asserting it, needless to say; his valuation of
her is only implied; it is in his tone--never in his words, which
invariably respect her own estimate of herself. His irony, none the
less, is close at hand and indispensable; he has a definite use for
this resource and he could not forego it. His irony gives him perfect
freedom to supersede Emma's limited vision whenever he pleases, to
abandon her manner of looking at the world, and to pass immediately to
his own more enlightened, more commanding height. Her manner was
utterly convincing while she exhibited it; but we always knew that a
finer mind was watching her display with a touch of disdain. From time
to time it leaves her and begins to create the world of Homard and
Binet and Lheureux and the rest, in a fashion far beyond any possible
conception of hers. Yet there is no dislocation here, no awkward
substitution of one set of values for another; very discreetly the
same standard has reigned throughout. That is the way in which
Flaubert's impersonality, so called, artfully operates.

And now another difficulty; there is still more that is needed and
that is not yet provided for. Emma must be placed in her world and
fitted into it securely. Some glimpse of her appearance in the sight
of those about her--this, too, we look for, to make the whole account
of her compact and complete. Her relation to her husband, for
instance, is from her side expressed very clearly in her view of him,
which we possess; but there are advantages in seeing it from his side
too. What did _he_ really think of her, how did she appear to him?
Light on this question not only makes a more solid figure of her for
the reader, but it also brings her once for all into the company of
the people round her, establishes her in the circle of their
experience. Emma from within we have seen, and Yonville from the
author's point of vantage; and now here is Emma from a point by her
very side, when the seeing eye becomes that of her husband. Flaubert
manages this ingeniously, making his procedure serve a further purpose
at the same time. For he has to remember that his story does not end
with the death of Emma; it is rounded off, not by her death, but by
her husband's discovery of her long faithlessness, when in