Flaubert is on a quest to embarrass the concept of Romanticism through Emma. When she marries Charles, she is like a teenage girl coming into freshman year; her naïveté leads her blindly into disappointment. Flaubert uses her situation in the beginning of the novel to depict the disappointment of the Romantic ideal, and the juvenile quest to obtain it. She is trying to hack her way into a fairytale, while the barrier between her and her goal is impenetrable. After just one lavish night, she reminisces on her days of “skimming cream with her finger from the earthenware milk pans in the dairy” as an illustration of “her past life”; and then is humbled into reality when she climbs into bed “against a sleeping Charles” (47,49). Poor girl! She has married this incredibly simple and stupid man and cannot look upon her life without the pretense that she should be one of these fancy women in the luxurious homes. She leaves the ball not on a carriage, but on her horse with Charles, who has a cardboard box between his legs. What a bummer reality check. Still when she gets home she barks orders and fires the poor servant girl and packs away her gown and shoes like she is better than the life that she is leading. Any hole through which Emma can see a way into her Romantic façade she has tries to squeeze through. It is depressing.