`Ces tableaux du monde': Keepsakes in Madame Bovary

Keepsakes figure prominently in Emma's éducation at the convent. Gift books for young women, common in France in the 1830s and 1840s, they provide a visual and literary intertext in Madame Bovary. I describe these publications and their illustrations, giving plates of engravings similar to those Flaubert describes; and I show their importance to the novel. Elements from the keepsakes passage recur often. The keepsakes are an example of how Emma eroticizes reading, a source for her fantasizing and her desire for consumer goods, and a preparation for her confusion between exterior sign and interior reality. (CR)