"I used to tell my students that you don't need three men to go through what she does. One will usually fit the bill, as Rodolphe, then Leon, then Charles Bovary. First the rapture and the passion. All the voluptuous sins of the flesh. In his bondage. Swept away. After the torrid scene up at his chateau, combing your hair with his comb--and so on. Unbearable love with the perfect man who does everything beautifully. Then, with time, the fantastical lover erodes into the workaday lover, the practical lover--becomes a Leon, a rube after all. The tyranny of the actual begins."
"What's a rube?"
"A hick. A provincial. Sweet enough, attractive enough, but not exactly a man of valor, sublime in all things and knowing all. A little foolish, you know. A little flawed. A little stupid. Still ardent, sometimes charming, but, if the truth be known, in his soul a bit of a clerk. And then, with marriage or without--though marriage will always speed things along--he who was a Rodolphe and has become Leon is transformed into Bovary. He puts on weight. He cleans his teeth with his tongue. He makes gulping sounds when he swallows his soup. He's clumsy, he's ignorant, he's coarse, even his back is irritating to look at. This merely gets on your nerves at first; in the end it drives you nuts. The prince who saved you from your boring existence is now the slob at the core of the boring existence. Dull, dull, dull. And then the catastrophe. Somehow or other, whatever his work, he fucks up colossally on the job. Like poor Charles with Hippolyte. He sets out to do the equivalent of removing a bunion and gives somebody gangrene. The once perfect man is a despicable failure. You could kill him. Actuality has triumphed over the dream."
"And which are you to me, do you think?"
"At this moment? I'd say somewhere between a Rodolphe and a Leon. And slipping. No? On the slide to Bovary."
"Yes." Laughing. "That's just about right."
"Yes, somewhere between desire and disillusionment on the long plummet to death."
--Philip Roth, Deception
