After reading this novel, I feel sympathy for Emma. I would rather call her Emma than Madame Bovary because I think whenever a woman should appear as an independent person, not a wife belonging to any man, especially at that time in France, a relatively stable mediocre era.
Emma had a basic instinct like all the people: unsatisfied with what she had and pursuing what she wanted. There is nothing wrong with her idea like this. Even in today』s society, it will be regarded as a positive attitude. If Emma could balance her dream and family, maybe she could be a successful woman, for example, a romanticist.
However, she couldn』t. In fact she was wrong in her childhood: at the age of thirteen, she was wrongly sent to receive aristocratic education, which was not suitable for her as a farmer』s daughter. The wrong education left erosion in her heart. From then on, her life drifted?away from?the?actual world. Her dream was too far away from her real life.
The impractical dream formed her wrong character and the wrong character decided her sad life. So she was bound to be a tragedy.
It』s hard to say that Emma didn』t understand love. In my opinion, she was a person who held on to love, unluckily, in a wrong way. After Emma married Mr. Bovary, she had two affairs. It was condemned as immoral at that time and many people regard her as a dissolute woman. However，I notice that when Emma was driven into the corner, she asked Guillaumin, the notary, for help. Guillaumin promised her on condition that he could own her. However, Emma refused him confirmedly: 「I am to be pitied, not to be bought.」 She cherished the love with her lover and once she was in love, she would never look at any other man. From this aspect, I think she was not of loose moral. She fell in love with another man and each time she regarded it as true love. She devoted herself into it, willing to give up everything for the so-called love. I think there is nothing wrong with love itself. The?irony?is?that she showed her loyalty to her lover, not her husband, moreover, she was unlucky to have fake love. She was cheated. In fact, she also was a victim.
Although I sympathize with Emma, it doesn』t mean that she didn』t do anything wrong. At least, as a wife, she was disloyal to her husband; as a mother, she was not responsible to her daughter. Even at last, she splurged on all her husband』s money. She destroyed her family with her own hands.
As a matter of fact, everyone in today』s society is Emma. ()There is greed, lust and vanity in everyone』s heart. Emma, as a literary character, is famous around the world because she is typical for a group of people and she speaks out what others dare not say. It is hard to say she is good or bad, she just not belongs to the society she lived in.
I always think that if everything could return to its origin, if at first Emma lived as a country girl, later marrying Mr. Bovary, would she be content to act as a housewife and live through life banally? Maybe. The only regret is that she went wrongly at first.