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 the first
days of his mourning he lights upon the packet of letters that betrays
her. The end of the story is in the final stroke of irony which gives
the man this far-reaching glance into the past, and reveals thereby
the mental and emotional confusion of his being--since his only
response is a sort of stupefied perplexity. Charles must be held in
readiness, so to speak, for these last pages; his inner mind, and his
point of view, must be created in advance and kept in reserve, so that
the force of the climax, when it is reached, may be instantly felt.
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