Emma is a farmer's daughter who builds massive illusions about life under the influence of chivalric romances, lyrical poems, and melancholy love stories she read secretly during her education at a convent. She marries Charles Bovary with the dream of escaping the countryside and living a life full of passion. However, when she fails to find the nobility and romance she hoped for in her marriage, she falls into deep boredom and hysterical crises. To escape her monotonous life in Yonville, she first forms a spiritual intimacy with Léon, and then embarks on a physical and intense illicit affair with Rodolphe. When she is abandoned by Rodolphe, she suffers a severe breakdown. Increasingly clinging to luxury consumer goods and expensive fantasies, Emma falls into the cunning web of the moneylender Mösyö Lheureux, dragging her household into economic ruin. She is a tragic figure who brings herself, step by step, to suicide while caught between the lies of romanticism and the ruthlessness of real life.
She was born the daughter of a well-off farmer named Father Rouault. However, she boarded at an old Ursuline convent, an environment that did not fit her nature at all; she shaped her mind by reading romantic novels, love stories, and works describing the pageantry of the upper classes that were smuggled into the convent. She even practiced the pain of losing her mother as a poetic melancholy pose, and when she finally started getting bored on her father's farm, she thought of Charles as a savior.
She has a long, erect neck, smooth white/pink cheekbones under her hair, large dark eyes with thick lashes that appear black at times and navy blue at others, soft lips, and carefully manicured, pointed white nails. Her clothes are designed to be much more elegant and fashionable than provincial standards (ruffled dresses, silk fabrics).
Berthe
Her daughter, who suffers from a lack of love, sometimes caressed like a doll, but often forgotten or pushed away in anger.
Léon Dupuis
A young lover caught in the same romantic delusions as herself, starting innocently and then becoming physical.
Charles Bovary
She looks at him with a mixture of hatred, disgust, and indifferent pity. She sees him as the architect of her tragedy.
Mösyö Lheureux
The fairy of destruction who drowns her in debt and silk by using her weaknesses.
Rodolphe Boulanger
The powerful figure through whom she lives out her passions and escape fantasies; however, his love is built entirely on exploitation.