People stare out windows quite often, sometimes without realizing what they are actually doing. While looking out windows, people search for the truth behind their thoughts, instead of just looking outside. In the novel, Flaubert uses windows for various reasons and associates them with different characters. Flaubert mainly associates windows with Emma. She often stares out the window, sometimes to see what is outside, but most of the time to look within herself. In the novel, Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert uses the motif of windows to highlight Emma's desires, limitations, and corruption.
Flaubert uses windows to convey Emma's unhappiness and show her desires as she longs for a more exquisite, more interesting life instead of the life provided for her. Towards the end of the ball in Vaubyessard, she leans out the window in order "to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would have to abandon in a short while" (51-52). The diction within this sentence emphasizes the extent of Emma's enjoyment and desires evoked by the ball. Flaubert uses "prolong" and "abandon" to create a negative image of Emma leaving the ball. The ball sparks Emma's desire for a fancy or "luxurious" life and afterwards she does not want it to end, she wants it to become her reality. Flaubert focuses on this desire for a different reality in order to develop Emma's fantasies which she creates for her life. Flaubert mentions one such fantasy when Emma's adulterous ways cause her to burn and throb with desire, open her window, stare at the stars, yearn for a prince's love and end up thinking of León (268). Emma stares out the window as she desires love from a wealthy man instead of from Charles, who does not provide enough for her needs. Flaubert uses Emma's desires to show her unhappiness in her marriage but also to show how easily she believes material objects bring her happiness.