Content Warning: This section discusses suicide, racism, and domestic violence.

In Madame Bovary, Flaubert explores the gap between fantasy and reality. Ultimately, characters in this novel are ruined by their inability to reconcile reality with fantasy and desire.

Emma Bovary projects all her fantasies onto reality. As a girl and a woman, Emma is not permitted to be a part of the world around her. She is sequestered away from reality, first in her schooling in the convent, then by her father. This was common for young women of a certain class in the 19th century. Emma is expected to become a wife and a mother, so real-world experiences are seen as superfluous in the development of a woman. Therefore, Emma has no other option but to experience the world through her novels. These novels give her an unrealistic understanding of human behavior, love, and life. Emma develops a rich interior fantasy world without realizing that these fantasies can’t and don’t exist in the real world. She gets married to Charles without knowing him well because she is so committed to finding the love of romantic literature, but she is quickly disillusioned by marriage.