DESIRE IS EXPRESSED BY EXCESS (ACCORDING TO LACAN IT IS WILD, CHAOTIC, ANARCHIC, BEYOND REASON, LOGIC, OR CONTROL.
It is also capable of shattering our sense of self/identity.
In Madame Bovary, the excessive use of romance reveals her desire for love. However, its excess simultaneously deflates its meaning.
MADAME BOVARY
by Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert's tale of nothing. Madame Bovary is stuck in a marriage which sinks her in dissatisfaction. Through the romantic novels (of which spin infinite versions of the same story) she reads she is able to temporarily escape her reality in favor of passions that escape the confines of womanhood. Her dreams and desire for a life in Paris give her great hope as she is caught in fantasies a mysterious man might rescue her from her mundane life. However, Madame Bovary does not understand that the distance that separates her from her dreams is herself and her inability to act in the real world. Instead she performs wealth, motherhood, and marriage in weak attempt to satisfy others' expectations. Her reliance on luxuries to derive happiness is a confusion of her internal desires shoved onto commodities that demand more from her- even her eventual death.
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Instead, excess of luxurious goods corrodes any dreams of long term happiness in their short-term satisfaction that demands more.
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