I. The artist MC Escher, famous for his deceptive manipulations of cartoons, once stated that "Reality cannot exist without illusion, and illusion not without reality." It is not known why Escher and countless others are concerned with the absurd, with the gray matter of the world; It's hard to understand how reality can become so stale and banal that you have to escape it altogether. After all, there are so many paradigms to be broken, so many conceptual questions left unanswered. Perhaps there are some who innately lack this recognition of the beauty and paradox of reality, some who choose to ignore the authenticity of the self and escape into some misunderstanding, some dream. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In few works is this character better encapsulated than in Gustave Flaubert's classic 1857 publication, Madame Bovary. Although the novel is often considered a commentary on the corruptible French bourgeoisie, the story centers on the selfish machinations of Emma Bovary, a stifled housewife dissatisfied with the life she leads. Emma, ​​perhaps inadvertently, falls into a parallel world of dinner parties, balls, and other opulent fears that ultimately lead her to a feeling of disgust at her true vitality, consequently ending her life by suicide. Emma never gets to see the magnificence in relationships and love; she is overwhelmed by pretentious ideas of romance and luxury. Her husband, Charles, unfortunately also lives in an imaginary world of his own. He fails to uncover his scheming wife's indiscreet plans. Charles believes he is living a fairy tale with a loving and obedient wife, when in reality that couldn't be further from the truth. Ironically, those the couple encounters in the insidious society that invades them are the ones closest to reality. In Madame Bovary and in today's civilization, both the beauty and the danger of illusion lie in the fact that it distances us from reality in such a way that the latter loses some of its splendor. II Lawrence Thornton, in his 1978 critique of the work, proposes that Emma Bovary exists in a fantasy world fabricated by "Three visual modalities...descriptive, hallucinatory and autoscopic." He states that the descriptive mode of vision explains Madame Bovary's internal condition and explains why she reacts the way she does to external stimuli. Thornton believes that Flaubert uses images of Emma's surroundings to parallel her innermost emotions. In her hallucinatory state, Madame Bovary loses track of time and abandons herself to her latest whim, be it a man or some other object of her ephemeral affection. For now, forget about being married and on the verge of bankruptcy. Thornton seems to condone his behavior due to this delusional pattern, blaming it and not the person on whom it manifests. The autoscopic vision seems to combine the first two, explaining the fusion between past and present and how it prevents Emma from distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Flaubert's style seems to fade behind Emma's articulations, making this mode the most revealing of Emma Bovary's psyche. Thornton's ideas about Flaubert's use of imagery to parallel Emma's feelings are brilliant, but his analysis of three different modes of vision seems far-fetched and exaggerated. Emma Bovary's notions and emotions almost always seem to be paired with a similar vignette, be it quixotic, bleak, or even hopeful. In fact, Flaubert reveals with this technique how easily Emma is influenced by the most subtle subtleties that hersurround. Thornton claims that Emma no longer understands the concept of time, when in reality it is exactly the opposite. Emma exists in her situation precisely because she is so aware of time. Madame Bovary knows that she cannot waste time as an obedient housewife and must expel her desires somehow. Thornton mistakes Emma's desires for fleeting desires indifferent to time. Although Emma wants to stay young forever, she knows exactly where and how she stands, and she's doing what she can to inject excitement into her life. If Emma had no concept of time, she wouldn't be so desperate and willing to fall into the illusion. Her perception of time is why her illusions are so dangerous.III If ever there was evidence of Emma Bovary's false sense of what is ideal and what is right, it lies in Flaubert's writing style. Emma examines her situation carefully and does not have the appreciation of the more self-centered and pompous people in society. Emma's journeys into thoughts express Flaubert's style impeccably, manipulating the reader into discovering the harmful effects of a false reality. Madame Bovary reflected: "Would this misery last forever? Would she never emerge from it? She certainly deserved as much as all those women who lived happily. She had seen in Vaubyessard duchesses who had clumsier figures and more vulgar manners than herself, and she cursed the injustice of God; she leaned her head against the wall and cried; she envied the tumultuous lives, the masquerade balls and the insolent pleasures with all the crazy distractions they probably offered and which she had never known." (83) This self-inquiry conveys Emma's intuition that she does not investigate beyond the material level, the external surface of things. He continues to create a chasm between his life and what he desires, evident in Flaubert's sentence structure. To begin the piece, Madame Bovary uses two simple, segregating phrases that refer to the life she currently leads. As the segment progresses and Emma gets closer to the life she wants, however, her thoughts materialize in freight train sentences, showing her boredom with her current circumstances and a romantic, garnished idea of ​​what she thinks she deserves. Flaubert employs this hidden technique throughout the novel, slowly widening the rift between whim and reality. The tone is melancholic, but as such it is also latently manipulative. Emma is so distraught, so desperate for a new existence, that she almost provokes empathy in the reader. This is precisely Flaubert's strategy: he wants the audience to feel compassion for Emma. The reader quickly realizes that he should not feel sympathy for such an ungrateful adulteress and has encountered the dangers of delusion. Emma is so far from reality that she invites the audience to side with her, demonstrating the power of fantasy. Emma is already too justified in her mind to return to reality, as evident in the line "She certainly deserved just as much...". She is convinced that what could be should be, and Flaubert portrays this exquisitely through his style.IV Society is a corruptible entity; it is imperfect and responsible for the dangers of today's world. There are many reasons for this imperfection of civilization, and, as exemplified in Madame Bovary, misunderstanding is among the most important. It is not to say that goals or ambitions are among these terrible doubts, rather they are arbitrary and lustful desires or impressions that weave flaws into the fabric of humanity. Illusion is the main catalyst of ignorance, sin and misfortune. Emma Bovary possesses the most frivolous desires in history and, rightfully, carries with her the most ignominy. Her desires stem from reading quixotic tales filled with lacy images of swoons and imaginative possessions, which lead her to an idea.