Those with a preconceived romantic idea of how their life should turn out will almost always be disappointed and unhappy when their unrealistic beliefs do not turn into reality. These people often foolishly view money as the treatment for their issues. In Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, the philosophical problem Flaubert addresses is the consistent pursuit of money in the belief that it has the ability to solve life’s problems. He presents this in the character Emma, who is always discontent with her life and desiring something more, something seemingly unattainable. As Emma begins to come to the realization of the life she has committed to with Charles, she begins to let her mind wander and imagines of a more romantic and extravagant …show more content…
In her book, Huppert comes to the conclusion that, “based on the study of multiple cultures’ happiness index and the relationship with the economic data of the time period, one would find it very difficult to scientifically prove that money can indeed buy happiness.” This finding is in line with Flaubert’s philosophy from one-hundred years earlier. Flaubert writes the fictional story of Emma’s yearning for a luxurious, and therefore happy life, while Huppert studies the factual data to come to the same conclusion as …show more content…
She commits suicide, which Flaubert writes in order to portray the ultimate demise and utmost unhappiness of those who attempt to purchase their happiness. In the closing scene of Emma’s life, Flaubert writes: “‘The Blind Man!’ she cried out. And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious, frantic, desperate laugh, at the imagined sight of the beggar’s hideous face, stationed in the eternal darkness like a monster.” Flaubert is using this to prove that she was not successful in her pursuit for her perfect life. The people in her lady magazines and romantic novels, those that were so much better than her and her husband, were not the people she was associated with in the closing seconds of her life. Rather, she was associated with a blind beggar. Emma was as good as a beggar at the end of her life, and Flaubert’s addition of Emma’s scream show that she is thinking the same. She wanted to be part of the high society, but in her pursuits, she ended her life a