She marries Charles Bovary with pictures of a romantic and dashing heroic figure in her head, but in truth Charles is a dull man who works as a country doctor and who is perfectly happy to remain in the same place doing the same thing for his whole life. Charles is contrasted with the more romantic figure of his father, someone who might be more to Emma's liking in terms of her vision of what a man should be like. Charles finds that nothing comes easily to him--he must work hard for everything, and hard work is part of his nature. He is also a man who has always been dominated by women--first his mother, then the first wife chosen for him by his mother, and now Emma. Charles is also blind to the real nature of Emma or to her feelings, and this blindness is also part of his assumption
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