e lives of these people who had, seemingly to her, a perfect existence or at the very least an exciting one. This was the only avenue of excitement that had been presented to Emma, so understandably this is what she chose to pursue in life. Emma does not begin her affairs because she was a nymphomaniac, but because she was looking for excitement, she wanted to really "live" life. Emma marries Charles because she wants to get off the farm. Her father also wantsto get her married off. Monsieur Roualt considered Emma to be of little help around the farm. Inwardly he forgave her, feeling that she was too intelligent for farming (Flaubert 45). Fortunately for women today if their father feels that they are too intelligent for farming,that life in the country does not suit them, they can send their daughters to college or let them move to the city and find work. For Emma there was marriage to Charles, who unfortunately for both Emma and himself, was nothing like the romantic heros she had readand fantasized about. Love seems impossible to Emma unless it appears with all the conventional signs which constitute a romantic code of love in fictions of romance (Bersani 33). Emma neverrealizes the depth of Charles' love for her. Because he does not use the flowery speech of her romance novels or constantly pledge his undying love, Emma does not feel the "fireworks" that she has been reading about all these years. It is no wonder that Emma fallsfor Rudolphe's lines so easily. When Rudolphe says, "In my soul you are a Madonna on a pedestal, exalted, secure, and immaculate (Flaubert 161), Emma falls hook, line, and sinker. If Rudolphe were here in 1995 he would probably be using cheesy lines on some silly drunk girl in a bar. It is truly shameful that a grown woman was so sheltered from life that she did not know the difference between a pickup line and real love. The truly frightening thought occurs to me that there were thousands o...
