skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, 'gentlemen' brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains." (22) It is at the convent where Emma starts to believe that she can be one of them, and escape her monotonous routine.
             Throughout her life, Emma continued to read novels similar to these, even when she was faced with the problems of not being able to make them reality. In essence, these novels made her depressed, because she could kept indulging in her fantasy world of romance, but she could not find that in her life. She was greatly influenced by her reading, and felt that she did not belong in the middle class; she was meant for an exciting life. She even devised the idea of what her perfect husband would be: "strong, handsome man with a valorous, passionate and refined nature, a poet's soul in the form of an angel..." Because of Emma's need for excitement, she turned to romantic novels. It was these books that gave her the ideas that she should live an exciting life. It was these ideas that led to her downfall. Romanticism developed as a rejection to the ideas of the Enlightenment. Authors and thinkers went against the strict,
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