Monsieur Rouault's Funeral: Character Analysis

Monsieur Rouault visits Charles the day following his wife’s funeral in order to to deliver him his payment for the medical treatment he had received, and he gives his condolences. He tells Charles to come and visit Les Bertaux again; he happily accepts the invitation. Rounalt cheers Charles up; he soon forgets all about his wife, everything starts to look better for Charles. Charles likes living without his wife, he doesn’t have someone there dictating his every move, he can eat when he wants to any never has to explain himself to anyone. Her death proved to be beneficial for his business, since all the townspeople feel now bad for his loss. Charles keeps on visiting Les Bertaux. Later, he sees Emma by herself, and she asks him to have some
drinks and he says yes when she says that she’ll have a drink too. Emma and Charles finally have a real conversation where Emma talks and Charles listens. They end up going back into her room to look at her mementos of her time back at the convent. She spends a lot of time complaining, she complains about the help, not living in a big city, but nevertheless Charles is charmed. Charles begins to think about the pros and cons of beginning a relationship with Emma and whether or not it is a good idea to remarry. Monsieur Rouault is not against this idea. He loves his daughter dearly, but he’s faced the reality that Emma isn’t of much use on the farm. He himself doesn’t even really like farming himself. Charles eventually built up the gumption to finally ask Monsieur Rouault for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It was very difficult for Charles to do, he kept getting choked up. Fortunate for him, Monsieur Rounalt gets the gist of what Charles is trying to ask and he gives them his blessing. As The winter progresses, and Emma is actively putting together her Trousseau. Emma is quite the romantic, she wishes to be married “by torchlight in the dead of night”. But Charles decided that they will continue with a traditional wedding is planned.