"By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary." Then, skipping several lines, she read, "Within twenty-four hours, without fail—" But what? "To pay the sum of eight thousand francs." And there was even at the bottom, "She will be constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and effects."
Emma is observant about material things, the appearance of something on the surface: such as how people dress or how much money they have. She never looks below the surface. As a result, she is easily taken in by people who are pretending to be something more than they really are, especially with respect to social class. Emma not only believes in the false impressions other people present to her, but she dislikes the very few people who are bona fide.
Trying to be optimistic about her future, with no grasp upon actuality, Emma does not realize that great joy, even for the wealthy and powerful, comes rarely. She also doesn’t realize that the way to attain this great joy will not come about in the same manner as it did for the characters in her beloved books. Both the country and the bourgeois lifestyle are dull. For instance, Emma is surprised to see that aristocrats do not serve extravagant cuisines and beverages at their everyday meals as she'd prefer. For her, life should be an excitement-filled drama.
Emma seeks out the extremes in life, both positive and negative. Unless she's experiencing some figurative peak of ecstasy, she's convinced that she's absolutely miserable. Her appetite for stimulation grows to the point where she becomes jaded enough not to appreciate the small pleasures in life, simply because they are small pleasures, and not the excitement-filled dramas to which were previously referred to. The more she experiences, the less she is satisfied with more normal activities. She needs thrill, excitement, something better than the status quo ante. Consider, for example, her taste in literature. She starts out with romances and bourgeois women's magazines targeted to her real social and economic position. From there she graduates to high-fashion women's magazines that advocate conspicuous consumption culminating in intensely romantic poetry. She is falling in love with the ideas of being in love, and having the time of her life every day. She lives vicariously through the characters that she reads about. Emma adopts the insane fictional character Lucy Ashton as her role model and becomes convinced that the correct way to respond to adversity is to lose her mind and commit suicide, which she eventually does. Her death is terrible as it is the result of devouring rat poison. Emma wished for a romantic death, but died a horrible one.
Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible.
Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she replied only with a shake of the head; she even smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder; a hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she was better and that she would get up presently. But she was seized with convulsions and cried out—
Just like Emma from Madame Bovary, Anna Nicole Smith started out as a simple, country girl who wished to have an extravagant lifestyle. Smith met and married an elderly oil billionaire, and when he died, received eight hundred million dollars; she was just like Emma in that she only cared about being rich and living life to the edge. Emma wore very low cut blouses which showed cleavage, and signaled to her lovers that she was available and promiscuous. Anna Nicole Smith, however, was known for showing much more than cleavage and shoulders.
Though Anna Nicole Smith also saw, financial trouble, similar to that which plagued Emma Bovary, the extravagant lifestyle was still available. However, the two seductresses shared one dangerous characteristic: the love for thrills. For Emma, she wanted sophistication so badly, that she had affairs with sophisticated men such that she could have this lifestyle, but Anna Nicole Smith’s thrills were drugs. Alcoholism and drug abuse led to her rather tragic death in 2007.
In conclusion, many of the same temptations that were prevalent in the mid-nineteenth century are still prevalent nowadays. Because some of the same temptations exist, many of the same consequences result, though the time periods are so different. There is no doubt that there is a definite relevance with regard to temptation in the mid-nineteenth and now.
