‘I’ll tell you what your wife needs,’ said his mother, ‘and that’s hard work - manual work! If she were obliged to earn her bread, like a lot of other people, she’d never get these hysterical moods of hers. It all comes of the pack of ideas she’s stuffed her head with, and the idle life she leads.’
‘But she’s always doing something,’ said Charles.
‘Doing something! Yes, reading novels - wicked books - works against religion, that ridicule the priests with quotations out of Voltaire! It’s playing with fire, that is, my boy! Anyone without religion will always go wrong in the end.’
So they decided to prevent Emma reading novels. It seemed no light undertaking. The good lady said she would do it, by stopping at the lending-library on her way through Rouen and telling them that Emma was giving up her subscription. If the shopkeeper still persisted in his poisoner’s trade, would they not have the right to inform the police?
” From Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Part Two, Chapter 7)