Mme. Bovary Ch. 6: A Convent Life

At the age of 13 Emma was taken to a convent by her father for her education. This seems a bit extreme (kind of like your parents threatening to send you to a convent if you were too 'wild' as a teenager), but this was actually considered rather normal in those days. The convent seems to be more of a boarding school with dorms full of other girls. There, Emma was notably pious, but even at a young age she shows signs of deviance.

She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things; and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification - for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions not scenery (Flaubert, 41).

From this we can see that Emma has slightly selfish tendencies. She's not an In-The-Long-Run kind of person.  She needs instant benefits to see the worth in anything, and that obviously doesn't always happen in marriage, or in life. This attribute is going to be a detriment to her In-The-Long-Run.

Emma begins to read the romance novels that are secretly shared between the girls in school. It is here that she is introduced to the idea of dashing princes rescuing damsels from high towers. This exposure to a fantasy romance, and her eagerness for it, is an early indicator that she will be let-down by the realities of a semi-arranged marriage.

It is also from these phantasmic stories that Emma begins to err from the church.

She reacted like a horse too tightly reigned; she balked, and the bit fell from her teeth. In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had loved the church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions; and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith as she grew ever more restive under discipline (Flaubert, 44).

Could this be an indicator that she no longer sees the truth in any moral code she was taught in school? After doing some research and watching a few movie trailers, I am getting the jist that Emma procures a few lovers on the side of her marriage. Now as I read the story, I see the subtle hints that will inevitably lead to later immoral decisions.

But you can't help but feel bad for the girl.

She easily persuaded herself that love, that marvelous thing which had hitherto been like a great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies, was at last within her grasp. And now she could not bring herself to believe that the uneventful life she was leading was the happiness of which she had dreamed (Flaubert, 45).

How crest-fallen would you be if you built up something so big just to find it was mediocre and uneventful?  She had wished and dreamed for romance, and when it seems to be knocking on her door (which Charles did indeed do), it fell short.