[Prudence]

Ooops - forgot to check in. I finished, too. It's been awhile since I read something in this genre. (If anyone really liked it and wants some other suggestions, I have several others I can recommend.)

First - as a romance of that time, it was destined to end in death - that's to be expected.

One of the things I'm currently pondering is the treatment of love. Emma spent her life captured by this romantic notion of love and hoping to find it - in the church, in marriage, in a small town lover, in a big city lover - all trying to capture some romantic idiom. A

nd yet, in the end it wasn't the trite "true love was always at home". Charles was a nothing. He did what people told him he should and expected that to be enough.

So the unchecked pursuit of romance (in the broad sense) and the total lack of interest - neither leads to a good end.