"They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little 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, rigid, and rather boring world the Enlightenment created, and displayed new interest in the individual, rather than the society. Romantic thinkers put an emphasis on emotion, love, and imagination, as well as the idealization of simpler and nobler times. What Emma did was to reject the basic ideas of the real world she lived in, just as the Romantic authors had with their stories. However, she believed these stories could become her actual life.