““Mary McCarthy, though, had it wrong when she wrote that “Madame Bovary is Don Quixote in skirts.” Emma’s suffering is Platonic: she searches, in all the wrong places and with all the wrong people, for an ideal that is only imagined. Until the end she believes that she will get the love and recognition she deserves. Quixote’s suffering is Christian. He has convinced himself that once upon a time the world really was what it was meant to be, that the ideal had been made flesh, then vanished. Having had a foretaste of paradise, his suffering is more acute than that of Emma, who longs for the improbable but not the impossible. Quixote awaits the Second Coming. His quest is doomed from the start because he is rebelling against the nature of time, which is irreversible and unconquerable””
