Vesta's Clock and Madame Aubain

It is quite interesting the simplicity of the way in which Flaubert's style shifts from a rich and envied woman, to a woman who is poor now, and lives in a rather run down house. In the wall, a clock is hanging. But not any clock. It is a clock resembling the temple of Vesta, the goddess of home, hearth, and household. but in the scene that is depicted here, the idea of "vestal" is contrary to what is being described. "On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than the garden(chapter one)".
Madame Aubin now lives in a different way she lived before. Her house is no temple of Vesta. On the contrary, she is deprived of all she had before. The novel is not centered only in Felicite, as many other readers have interpreted. The novel does emphasize in her life, but it also shows how in others life is seen, and actually lived. but in the first sentences, Madame Aubin is perfectly described. once wealthy, but now she is lost maybe with the absence of her husband, or with the fact of having no more ambition in life. She worked, and slept. She aged quickly. "It communicated with a smaller room, in which there were two little cribs, without any mattresses"(chapter one). This is almost conspicuous since after a life of sorrow, a woman expects not to have any children. She is left with that emotional emptiness of a a heart full of love never used, and her arms empty for ever. The cribs are her desire, but there is no mattress that can hold a child. In the first pages, the book contains misery already.