Emma and the men

Emma surrounded by her husband and suitors

Emma Bovary is most well known for her love affairs. Her love affairs made the French authorities prosecute Flaubert for being a threat to common decency. In his defence he claimed that the story is about the dangers love affairs and lavishness lead to. Emma is punished in the novel, no one would follow her example, she is there to set a BAD example, not an example which people were supposed to follow. So why punish him? Flaubert was acquitted.  

Emma and Léon

Indeed,  Flaubert and the society punished Emma severely for being a woman with more than one man in her love life. I find many faults with Emma, one is her constant strive for being better positioned in society and her following contempt for her husband who isn't status striving. On the contrary he felt most at ease when he lived in Toste and visited farms and homes of simple people.

Emma and Rodolphe

Emma, doesn't long for being the under - occupied wife of a country doctor. She longs for adventures together with a knight in shining armour, with a castle and servants and unlimited credit. So when she meets her soul-mate Léon and he falls madly and deeply in love with her she doesn't feel the same. She feels attracted to him but she doesn't recognize her feelings for the beautiful young Léon as feelings of love, she wants to be his friend. 

Whereas the seductive villain, Rodolphe, gets her full attention right from the start, since he seems to be everything she ever wanted; he has a castle and horses and he even looks like the knight she has dreamt of, and above all; he offers her to go riding with him. By this act of chivalry  he also offers Emma to be like him; Emma becomes the knight in shining armour mounting her own fiery steed.

I find Emma contradictory. Rodolphe is a middle aged man that I find disgusting, while Léon seems to be a rather interesting and kind young man. This is how Emma reacts all through the novel, she trusts the untrustworthy and cheats on the faithful friends she has, apart from Charles and Léon she never understands how much the young boy Justin loves her, or how much she lost when she lost her father -in-law. When she finally becomes the mistress of Léon she soon feels disgusted in his presence. Poor Emma, she is truly disabled by her want of ability to feel contentment. How human isn't she in that respect.