In love with love.

Unhappy with herself and therefore unhappy even when she should be happiest.

Too many romance novels.  Depicting love as forever passionate.  Forever awaiting the perfect situation, the man who loves passionately, who’s rich and cultured.

Horrible to her husband.  Terrible how she persuaded him to operate on a club footed man when he’d never performed a surgery, just in the hopes of him becoming someone of interest and rich.   Sad and pitiful how devoted he was to her and how much she loathed him and was disrespectful to him.

Indifferent to her little girl.  Only merit to any of this character’s ponderings is when she prays she won’t give birth to a girl because she feels as though girls are trapped/restrained by convention and men are free; to love, to seek adventure, to choose their destiny.  “A revenge for all her past helplessness.”

Woe is me!  I’m so unhappy!  It’s everyone else’s fault! My life coulda, shoulda, woulda if only I’d been treated fairly…  I’m the victim!  Men are to blame!  Nobody understands me!  Nobody gets it! Who cares about your feelings; we’re talking about me!  I don’t deserve this.  I deserve more.  Why is this happening to me?  Why does bad luck follow me wherever I go?  When I get what I want, why am I still unhappy?

Oh puke!  This woman is repugnant!  She is such a martyr and so selfish and delusional; believing that she’s been wronged and blaming everyone else but herself for her misery.

I find it infuriating that the synopsis of the book mentions feeling sympathy for the human frailty of Madame Bovary.  Give me a break!  She’s not frail when she seduces her 2 lovers; she’s cunning and manipulative and seeking satisfaction in passion and riches.  She’s not frail when she spends money she knows her poor husband doesn’t have to pay back; she’s self-centered and shrewd when she gets power of attorney from her husband to squander what money he does possess.

When reality catches up with her and her lovers grow tired of her and she has recklessly spent every last cent and lost everything, only then does she “appear” frail.  But still, she is “the victim” and in her mind her life has never gone as she deserved and she will not live as it is and decides to, again, think of only herself and kill herself.

Leaving behind a bereaved husband who finds out about all of her infidelities and wrongdoings and dies young of a broken heart, leaving behind a little girl who will be ruined in poverty forever.