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Motif
Explanation and Analysis—Emma's Eyes:
The novel pays great attention to Emma’s eyes; however, often the descriptions of her eyes contradict each other, particularly concerning her eye color, which draws attention to the motif. Flaubert uses the motif of Emma’s eyes to reflect Emma’s changing ambitions and character. The first mention of Emma’s eyes is in Part 1, Chapter 2 when she first meets Charles:
If she were beautiful, it was in her eyes; though they were brown, they seemed to be black because of the lashes, and they met your gaze openly, with an artless candour.
In this description, her eyes reflect the honesty and naivety of her youth (at least in Charles’s eyes), showing a warm brown. However, their darkness also suggests that there is more than meets the eye, which hints at the ambitions underlying her impending romance with Charles. This motif develops in a later description of her eyes in Part 1, Chapter 5, set early into her marriage with Charles where she has gotten what she wanted but is beginning to realize it’s not enough:
So very close, her eyes seemed even bigger, especially when she first awoke and her eyelids fluttered into life. Black in the shadows, and deep blue in full daylight, as if the colours were floating layer upon layer, thickest in the depths, coming clear and bright towards the surface.
Emma is enjoying the escape from her previous entrapment (tending to her father and helping him on the farm). The luxuries that come with Charles’s larger salary and her role as a wife have opened a whole new world to her. This is signified by the clarity of the blueness of her eyes in the daylight, mirroring how her dreams are coming to fruition. However, the darkness of her eyes in the shadows foreshadows her warring and sprouting discontent. Emma realizes that despite her newfound pleasures, she does not love Charles, so although her more superficial ambitions are achieved, her more complex desires for love are not. This discontent is deep-rooted at first, only existing in the shadows. However, the ball held by the Marquis d'Andervilliers acts as a catalyst for making that darkness and her greedier ambitions more permanent. This can be seen as she is getting ready for the ball in Part 1, Chapter 8:
Her dark eyes seemed even darker.
The darkening of her eyes signals her growing ambitions and only continues as the novel goes on and her passions lead her to immoral ends. For example, at the start of her affair with Rodolphe in Part 2, Chapter 9, she is shocked by the largeness and blackness of her eyes:
But, when she looked in the mirror, she was startled by her own face. Never had she had eyes so large, so black, so mysterious. Something subtle, transfiguring, was surging through her.
She kept saying to herself: ‘I have a lover! A lover!’
The consumption of her eyes by darkness signifies her growing corruption by her endless ambitions and desires for happiness, even as it leads her into adultery, abandoning both her child and her husband.
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