ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which Emma Bovary's identity is simultaneously constructed and undone within Madame Bovary. One way of thinking about ennui is to argue that Emma's problems are to do with her attempts to establish her identity to her own satisfaction within the social context that shapes and defines it for her and despite her. Emma's efforts to invent herself as a romantic heroine realize themselves eventually in adultery. With Rodolphe Boulanger, Emma adopts the role she has sought to play ever since her disappointing marriage to Algernon Charles. After summoning 'the heroines from the books she had read', she becomes a fantasy character as 'she merged into her own imaginings'. The ways in which Emma's identities are generated and played out could be said to be the subject of Gustave Flaubert's novel. Tony Tanner has argued that the price of Emma's experimentation is the slow disintegration of what he calls the heroine's 'Emma-ness'.
