Throughout the course of a lifetime, a person can have many intense relationships with many people. Emma is not an exception to this generalized statement, but rather fits it quite well. Emma was corrupted by books and fantasy lives, which lead her to try to have fantasy life relationships. These relationships that Emma had were not without their variety. The three main people that she had a relationship with are Charles, Rodolphe, and Leon.
The relationship between Charles and Emma was a marriage of practicality. Ever since the first night, when Emma left the bedroom rather bored in the morning, their relationship went downhill. Throughout the whole marriage Charles always loved Emma unconditionally, and would have forgiven her for anything, even the debts she had caused. Emma however found it very difficult to love Charles, because he was middle class, has low ambition, had bad manners and was all around a dull person. To sum up the relationship of Emma and Charles, he was a very happy man, however she always wanted something more, something that he could not give her.
Emma had an interesting relationship with Rodolphe, seeing as though it was her first actual affair. She cared for Rodolphe because he was pretty much everything that Charles was not, but he did not exactly return the feelings she had for him. Emma was more of a mistress for Rodolphe than anything else, as represented by him having pictures of many other girls in his closet. To show a little bit of how Rodolphe viewed the relationship, the quote of him saying "but how can I get rid of her later?" helps to portray his thoughts. In all reality, Rodolphe was just trying to use another pretty face, where Emma wanted an actual life.
The last person that Emma got involved with at an adulterous level was Leon (while she had met Leon earlier than Rodolphe she only had thoughts about him, no actions). Emma and Leon's relationship could probably best be described as Leon was Emma's mistress of the male persuasion.
