madame bovary

Emma at the beginning of the novel was someone who made active decisions about what she wanted. She saw herself as the master of her destiny. Her affair with Rudolphe was made after her decision to live out her fantasies and escape the ordinariness of her life and her marriage to Charles. Emma's active decisions though were based increasingly as the novel progresses on her fantasies. The lechery to which she falls victim is a …

…Emma's characters. It is Anna and Emma's reading of novels which allows them to abandon their husbands and pursue their fantasies both in life and in their minds. It is reading which prevents them from using reason to correct their troubles. It is reading which distorts their reality and forces them to become dissatisfied and bored with the ordinary pleasures of life. Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are books ironically about the dangers of reading.