Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology and psychoanalysis, described human consciousness as the combination of three elements, the id, the ego and the superego. The id is what controls our personal desires, the superego controls our ideas about our place in society, and the ego sits between these two, balancing their effects to help us make rational decisions. Although these theories were developed long after Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary or Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the main characters in each (Emma and Ivan) both represent people dominated by an aspect of their subconscious. While Emma is dominated by her id, seeking only selfish pleasures in life, Ivan is dominated by his superego, letting the norms of society rule his life for him. Even though there is this major difference in their subconscious motivations, Ivan and Emma are essentially looking for the same thing: fulfillment in life. For Emma, ​​this means romantic escapades with the dukes of the royal court, but for Ivan, fulfillment in life is marked by good career progression and a stable position in society. It is interesting to note that despite all these differences in their ways and means, both characters ultimately find themselves faced with the same problems. Emma Bovary has all the characteristics of a person living only to fulfill her own wishes and desires. Like a child, she seeks pleasure, and when she is not actively stimulated by something she wants to do, she is plagued by boredom. When she seeks these stimuli, she pays no attention to the consequences her actions will have on others. This attitude permeates every one of her actions, to the point that she does not even take into account the needs of her only child, Berthe, in ...... middle of paper ...... was able to describe with so much precisely a character who lives life solely through an element of their subconscious. What is astonishing is the extent to which each character fits perfectly into an individual aspect of Freud's psychoanalytic model, even though this model was only developed thirty years after the publication of these novels. Thanks to his work, Freud is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. If this is true, then the same should be done for Flaubert and Tolstoy, because they were obviously just as adept as Freud at finding the emotions underlying human behavior. Works cited Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. Tolstoy, Leo. “The death of Ivan Ilyich.” The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Dana Gioia and RS Gwynn. New York: Longman, 2001. 1585-1624.