Madame Bovary: Emma's Desire To Control Her Surroundings Often, people fantasize a world in which all their goals and aspirations come true. In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Emma is a woman with dull expectations of life, which gives her a desire to control her surroundings. She creates many illusions due to her tedious life, which are dashed to pieces as they encounter reality. Ultimately, it is the destructive power of the inner conflict between illusion and reality that destroys her. Emma fabricated her illusions because of her past influences on her life. She always wanted somet