Later, when Emma dies, the blind man gets to the end of his song about a young girl dreaming. We then discover that what we thought was a song about an innocent woman is actually a bawdy, sexual song. This progression from innocence to sexual degradation mirrors the path of Emma's life and inevitable destruction.
Evans implies that Madame Bovary is a novel about the dangers of reading romantic novels since Emma's image of romance developed from the books she read at the convent school. These books reflected the more exuberant aspects of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement that focused on the expression of the emotional and imaginative life of the individual. Emma gorged herself on fixed ideas about ideal romance, but since fantasy is rarely reality, she created chaos all around her when she imposed those dreams on her daily life. She actually becomes ill after romantic episodes in her life. It is at this point that Romanticism, according to Evans' investigation of Flaubert's personal convictions, might be considered a disease.
The article's most significant feature, the diagnosis of the beggar's disease, links his illness to not only the story's characters, but also to the social concerns of France during Flaurbert's time. Evans provides a detailed overview of the beggar's physical ailments, and then interjects, .
Medically this is a complex picture, and the blindness appears to be no more than one symptom among many .Generations of literary critics have mocked Homais' attempts to cure the beggar with a diet and ointments, but no one, to my knowledge, has reflected on the fact that for the pharamacist, the diagnosis is not amaurosis, but scrofula. In the 19th century, this term was an all-purpose designation for the skin pathologies of uncertain origins (3).
She later exposes Flaubert's friendship with Louis Bouihet "a medical consultant-- who disclosed detailed information regarding the beggar's symptoms.