In an ideal world, like the one Emma Bovary yearns for in the book Madame Bovary, romantic relationships are based on the principle that the two participants are madly in love with each other. But in the world Gustave Flaubert paints in his book, as in the real world, passion and personal gain are the only reasons people enter into a relationship. Before meeting Emma, Charles Bovary weds a much older woman. He “had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money.”(p. 7) But he also laments that “his wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company