Madame Bovary: Emma's Unorthodox Behavior Due To Childhood From earliest infancy, an individual's character is molded by experience. In Gustave Flaubert's novel entitled Madame Bovary, Emma's unorthodox behavior during her married life can be attriuted to the illusions she maintained about life during her girlhood. These, combined with her father's disinterest in her mental happiness become the force which eventually leads Emma Bovary to commit suicide. When she was 13 years old, Pere Rouault took his daughter, Emma, to town to put her in a convent where she would receive an education. She received more than her father bargained fo