There are several divisions and blurred lines with fantasy and reality in , Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Most people experience moments of either wanting more than their circumstances permit or wanting different circumstances altogether. One hardly needs to look further than popular cultural adages such as “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" to understand just how pervasive this sentiment is. The near universality of this feeling makes it a recurrent theme in literature. This kind of persistent desire afflicts Emma, the main character in the novel, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, to such an extent that it keeps her in a permanent state of dissatisfaction, and to such a degree that it eventually causes her to commit suicide. In , Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert because Emma never develops the kind of coping skills that would allow her to adapt to her reality and maintain a healthy fantasy life, she instead develops a pathological approach to escaping her conditions. Her attempts fail, however, and she is unable to attain her fantasy; yet, she is also unable to live with her reality. This makes death the only viable option for her at the end of , Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

Emma’s dissatisfaction with marriage in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert begins almost immediately after crossing the threshold of Monsieur Bovary’s door. Having read what love should be in romantic novels, Emma is disillusioned by the reality of an intimate relationship. In one of the important quotes from , Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Emma says, “‘[B]liss’, ‘passion’, and ‘intoxication’" [were]…words which she had thought so fine when she read them in books" (30), but the same states of feeling elude her. She attaches these feelings to experiences that simply are not realistic for her and her husband’s financial means. Even from this early point it is clear that Emma is both setting herself up for failure or for heartbreak because it seems certain that the illusory world she has constructed is not sustainable. In ,Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Emma recalls reading of passionate adventures to far-flung places, and believes that had she and Charles enjoyed a proper honeymoon, she might have felt better (35). This is one of the first, but certainly not one of the last, fits of fantasy that she will develop and nurture to the point that it obscures her ability to both perceive and accept her actual circumstances.

Emma’s disappointment in , Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is compounded by what she perceives to be a boredom that is innate to country living (35). It is also exacerbated when she becomes a mother, which, like marriage, does not meet her romance-novel induced expectations. Unfortunately, her free time allows her to think far too much about the shortcomings of everyone and everything around her. She considers each person and each circumstance of her life from the perspective of “If only"; in other words, if only the person were more worldly, or if only she lived in the city, life would somehow be better and she would feel more satisfied. She fantasizes at length, “wondering whether, if things had turned out differently, she might not have met a different man. She tried to imagine what all those things which had never happened might have been like" (39). Such thoughts, of course, take on a life of their own when they become as obsessive as they are for Emma in , Madame Bovary. The inadequacies of the people and conditions of Emma’s life are her primary focus initially; however, over the course of the novel she begins to shift her attention towards an action plan that she believes will make her life better. The move from thought to action is set in motion after the Bovary’s visit to the home of the Marquis, where her fantasy of the “luxurious life" (48) is affirmed; people could—and did!—live as she hoped she could.

Before she exercises her own agency, though, she expects to be rescued from her boring existence, another fantasy. She gives up any activities that had once brought her pleasure, including piano playing and reading (56). When she breaks through this passive phase of despair, she enters a new period, in which she has decided she will no longer settle for less than what she wants. She does not take other people’s feelings into account, nor do her actions reflect responsible, mature behavior. Instead, the fantasies that Emma plays out are destructive and maladaptive. Rather than find a way to accept and cope with her real life, Emma tries to invent a life that is clearly unsustainable. She violates her vows of marriage by pursuing other men, who themselves are discontent with their lots in life and have devised different strategies for attaining what they want. She accumulates insurmountable debt by purchasing unnecessary trinkets that she cannot afford without borrowing money. This transition from idle fantasy to dangerous action sets Emma up for her tragic end.

Emma’s suicide at the end of Madame Bovary is, from a narrative perspective, inevitable. Given that she has been unable to adapt in a healthy manner to her own life, her only choice is to escape, first into fantasy and wishful thinking, and then into action that fails to bring her the luxurious, satisfying life that she had envisioned. While fantasies can serve healthy, and even necessary functions, Emma has become the victim of her own unattainable wishes. By committing suicide at the end of Madame Bovary, Emma also fails to learn the lesson that becomes so obvious to the reader: although we may wish, at times, for a different life, our only viable option is to accept the life we have, to make the best we can of it, and to enjoy the true pleasures that it does offer, even when those pleasures may not be the ones we anticipated.

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Work Cited

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Life in a Country Town. Trans. Gerard Hopkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.