Love vs. Passion in Madame Bovary

In an ideal world, like the one Emma Bovary yearns for in the book Madame Bovary, romantic relationships are based on the principle that the two participants are madly in love with each other. But in the world Gustave Flaubert paints in his book, as in the real world, passion and personal gain are the only reasons people enter into a relationship. Before meeting Emma, Charles Bovary weds a much older woman. He “had seen …

…the money that might have saved her life. The only one that does mourn is Charles, her devoted husband. But for the most part, all he laments about is her beauty. Once he is out of mourning, he sees that he is broke, and promptly dies. The relationships in Madame Bovary are numerous and varied in their reasons, but they all share in common the fact that love was not the driving factor behind them.