Emma before and after

Love Jane Austen's Emma? A little known fact is that French novelist Gustave Flaubert's most famous novel, Madame Bovary, is a response to Emma. In the Austen novel the focus is on the difficult courtship and an idealised marriage is implied; in Flaubert the courtship is smooth (if not ideal) and the marriage is difficult. Flaubert's main character (also called Emma) is the bored wife of a country doctor who entertains herself by interfering in various village affairs and in looking outside her marriage for love. Madame Bovary is a rich and rewarding novel with a lot to say about romance (in the current and old senses of the word) but it's a deliberate counterpoint to Jane Austen's Emma and therefore a very different experience.