If there is anything true and permanent in the novel, it
would have to be Charles' devotion to Emma. While Flaubert constructs a vision of
reality where individuals are self interested, moving from one conception of the good to
another, Charles is extremely devoted to his wife's happiness and his wife, in general.
The problem is that Charles does not fit that vision of love that Emma holds. Charles
does not fit the Romanticized and passionate vision of love that is in her mind.
Charles might be a clod and might be a bit of an oaf, but that does not lessen in any
way the love he has for her and the devotion he feels for
her.
From the beginning of the novel,
Flaubert characterizes Charles as dull, dim, and graceless. The narrator notes that his
conversation was 'flat as the sidewalk of the street and the ideas of everyone he spoke
to passed through it without exciting emotion, laughter, or contemplation'.... His name
suggests his 'bovine,' cud-chewing
personality.
Charles never wavers in
his commitment to Emma, even though she moves from lover to lover and treats him in a
fairly dismissive manner. She spends his money at will and he does not say a word.
Charles is so devoted to Emma that he adopts her same perspective on being in the world
when she dies, as he becomes as disenchanted with life as she was. In the most bizarre
of twists, Flaubert creates Charles to be such a devoted husband that he becomes the
worst elements of his wife when she dies, as he "wastes away and dies" at novel's end.
A case can be made that while the title reflects Emma, the novel is more about Charles
and how some people in the world are condemned to live a life where they love, but never
feel as if what it is to feel love.
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