Emma Bovary, the first modern tragic hero (or victim)

Broad generalization but fiction before the mid-19th century either focused on one social class only, e.g., the fairly tight and insular fiction of Austen, Fielding, Richardson, for British examples, or had characters who would cross class boundaries by marriage (e.g., Bronte) or by fortunate discovery of mystery of birth (back to Fielding) or characters who escaped their class by running away (Twain - tho he's already late 19th); this whole structure or "paradigm" shifted as social class mobility became possible through talent or accumulation of capital, and then we see the fiction of, for example, Balzac, across a great and broad social spectrum, and Dickens. But Flaubert, in Madame Bovary, is the first, I think, to write a novel of aspiration and class mobility focused on a character and not on the vast diorama of society; or, put in another way, Madame Bovary is one of the first novels that is actually about money; the idea of Charles's being ruined by his indulgence of Emma and running up of debt it a theme almost impossible to imagine in any fiction before Flaubert - the nobility never thought about money, and the working classes never had enough beyond what they needed for sustenance, if that. But with the rise of a professional class, e.g., Charles Bovary, the health official, it's now possible for the first time to accumulate wealth and to emulate the nobility - purchasing the right clothes, the right decor, attending the right performances, traveling in style - even if beyond your means - Emma, in that sense, is the first modern tragic hero, or victim - in an earlier time, her aspirations would have been more clearly circumscribed - or, if not, her only route to achievement would have been to "marry up" - something her father doesn't really consider, in giving her away (and in convincing her to marry Charles?) - he sees marriage to a professional as the best bargain he can strike. He sees Emma, rightly, as modern - she sees herself, wrongly, as classic.