although I can tell you that the death in the novel, too, is grim and realistic--the anti-beautiful death the way the affairs and dalliances have been anti-romantic.

Data point appreciated!

While there are still plenty of women who share Emma's desire to be carried away by a romantic husband or lover, it's not what she fantasizes about that's her downfall, it's letting her internal storytelling become more and more divorced from what's really happening. That can happen in any situation (a person might imagine themselves to be a trenchant voice of social criticism, for example, when really they're nothing more than an Internet troll.)

Yes, that exactly. The act of fantasizing itself isn't even the problem. It's that not knowing—or being unwilling to acknowledge—where the fantasy leaves off and facts come into play.

And it's not like there's any clear line! It's kind of like the boundary between here and faerie--it won't bear direct examination, and it keeps moving and changing.

That is a wonderful way of conceptualizing it and feels as though it says something true about faerie, too.

At the time, I had a "Not all women" reaction, but now I think I'd switch it around as say "Just as many men"--because that capacity for disastrous self-delusion is absolutely equal opportunity across the gender spectrum.

Agreed. I can see that I'll need to read Flaubert to see how he feels about his characters, but at least the film is very clear that its point is not "Those silly women and their novels!"