Emma Bovary, a literary character in the wrong novel

So at last Emma Bovary has a lover, as she "gives" herself to that slime Rodolphe (couldn't remember his name when writing yesterday's post) - he leads her along and tells her how much he loves her and thinks nothing of breaking up a marriage and a home - and we see, over the course of one chapter, how he seduces her, another one of Flaubert's great cinematic scenes, their horseback excursion away from the village and into the country, and then she goes home and her mind and heart are full of thoughts of Rodolphe, doesn't have the slightest qualms about betraying her husband, who throughout has been nothing but kind and generous to her, let alone a thought about her child. Then she begins visiting Rodolphe at all hours, recklessly - everyone in the village except Charles, and maybe even the poor, pathetic Charles, must be aware of her betrayal - until at last Rodolphe tells her to back off; he's had his conquest and he's getting tired of her. Once again, Emma is used, objectified. One of the many great accomplishments of Flaubert's writing is how we develop such sympathy Emma despite her mean and selfish behavior throughout - and this sympathy is not for her as a victim of her time or of her gender, though those issues are always present, but as a truly tragic victim - she has deep passions and desires that she cannot fulfill in any form - it's almost as if, to put it in postmodern terms, she is a character in the wrong novel - in other words, she sees herself as a great romantic heroine, but in fact she is a provincial housewife. Put another way, she is a bit Quixotic, imagining her world to be that of a great romance - later in the novel, she will push Charles far beyond his capacities in a crazy attempt to make him a great medical practitioner - when in fact her life is plain and simple and domestic; she'd like to ride off into the sunset on horseback, and yet she continues to find herself holding a basin while her husband lets blood from the forearm of some stable-boy. Emma Bovary is a literary character who is trying to escape from her own plot. (Ironically, Woody Allen wrote a hysterical story about a guy named Kugelmass who falls in love with Emma and finds himself suddenly become a character within Madame Bovary, the "the Kugelmass episode.")