Sentimental Education

By Gustave Flaubert and Louise Bogan

"I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation—or, more accurately, the history of their feelings," declared Gustave Flaubert, who envisioned "a book about love, about passion; but passion such as can exist nowadays—that is to say, inactive." First published in 1869, this novel fulfills Flaubert's conception with a realistic, ironic portrait of bourgeois lives played out against France's tumultuous revolution of 1848 and the founding of its Second Empire.
Frédéric Moreau, a law student in Paris, dreams of achieving success in art, business, journalism, and politics. His aspirations take a romantic turn upon a chance encounter with a married woman, who inspires a lifelong obsession. Frédéric befriends his idol's husband, an influential art dealer, and quickly finds himself seduced by society life—and bedeviled by financial problems, ideological conflicts, and betrayals of trust. Blending romance, historical authenticity, and satire, Flaubert's Sentimental Education ranks among the nineteenth century's great novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: May 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486114781

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821. He initially studied to become a lawyer, but gave it up after a bout of ill-health, and devoted himself to writing. After travelling extensively, and working on many unpublished projects, he completed Madame Bovary in 1856. This was published to great scandal and acclaim, and Flaubert became a celebrated literary figure. His reputation was cemented with Salammbô (1862) and Sentimental Education (1869). He died in 1880, probably of a stroke, leaving his last work, Bouvard et Pécuchet, unfinished.

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DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: MARY CAROLYN WALDREP

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: T. N. R. ROGERS

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2006, is an unabridged republication of the uncredited translation, edited by Dora Knowlton Ranous, that was published by Brentano’s, New York, in 1922. The Introduction by Louise Bogan is reprinted from the edition of Sentimental Education published by New Directions Books, New York, in 1957.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flaubert, Gustave, 1821–1880.

[Education sentimentale. English]

Sentimental education : the story of a young man / Gustave Flaubert ; translated by Dora Knowlton Ranous ; introduction by Louise Bogan.

p. cm.

An unabridged republication of the uncredited translation . . . that was published by Brentano’s, New York, in 1922. The introduction by Louise Bogan is reprinted from the edition of Sentimental education published by New Directions Books, New York, in 1957—T.p. verso.

9780486114781

1. Young men—Fiction. 2. Married women—Fiction. 3. Unrequited love—Fiction. 4. Paris (France)—Fiction. 5. France—History—February Revolution, 1848—Fiction. 6. Paris (France)—History—June Days, 1848—Fiction. I. Ranous, Dora Knowlton, 1859–1916. II. Title.

PQ2246.E4E5 2006

843’.8—dc22

2006046345

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

BOOK I

CHAPTER I - A PROMISING EPISODE

CHAPTER II - THE WISDOM OF YOUTH

CHAPTER III - THE RULING PASSION

CHAPTER IV - THE ETERNAL FEMININE

CHAPTER V - A CONSUMING LOVE

CHAPTER VI - HOPES DEFERRED

CHAPTER VII - PARIS AGAIN

CHAPTER VIII - FREDERICK ENTERTAINS AND IS ENTERTAINED

CHAPTER IX - THE FAMILY FRIEND

CHAPTER X - A PLEASANT LITTLE DINNER

CHAPTER XI - A DUEL

CHAPTER XII - LITTLE LOUISE BECOMES A WOMAN

CHAPTER XIII - ROSANETTE IN A NEW RÔLE

BOOK II

CHAPTER XIV - REVOLUTIONARY DAYS

CHAPTER XV - LOUISE IS DISILLUSIONED

CHAPTER XVI - THREE CHARMING WOMEN

CHAPTER XVII - FREDERICK’S BETROTHAL

CHAPTER XVIII - UNDER THE HAMMER

CHAPTER XIX - AFTER MANY YEARS

CHAPTER XX - WHEN A MAN’S FORTY

Introduction

by Louise Bogan

L’Éducation sentimentale appeared in 1869; it was Flaubert’s third published novel. It bore the title of an early work, written between 1840 and 1845, which Flaubert had abandoned and left unpublished, on the advice of his friend, Louis Bouilhet, who then suggested to him the setting and theme of Madame Bovary. Both the early and the published versions told the story of Flaubert’s youth, but while the first version was filled with a still active Romanticism, the second, coming after Madame Bovary (1857) and Salammbo (1862) showed Flaubert in full possession of his mature powers. He was forty-eight, and he had come into a settled and large view of the life and social institutions of his time. Viciously attacked by the critics and neglected by the general public at its appearance, L’Éducation sentimentale is now generally acknowledged, by modern French critics, as Flaubert’s masterpiece. A profound and sardonic comment on Flaubert’s own generation and the France of his young manhood, it has remained pertinent to the human and social dilemmas of our own day.

Only a few friends—Banville, the Goncourts, George Sand—understood the book’s intentions or appreciated Flaubert’s success in putting them through. Sand realized that Flaubert’s readers were still too close to the events described, and too involved in the Second Empire point of view, to wish to appreciate the novel’s ruthless analysis of social change and human motives. They recognized themselves too easily. And Sand complained that Flaubert gave no overt clue as to where his sympathies lay. She wanted an expression of blame . . . to condemn the evil. People do not understand that you wanted precisely to depict a deplorable state of society which encourages bad instincts. Flaubert had run into this sort of obtuseness in the French public (and government) before this, on the occasion of the suit brought against the morality of Madame Bovary. He was incapable of agreeing with Sand’s rather sentimental moralistic demands. His idea of the relation between the individual and society was far more complicated than hers. Society warped the individual, but was it not individuals who had created, and blown up to enormous proportions, the idea of government? Perhaps the basic evil lay deeper in the constitution of the human heart.

Flaubert was depressed by the book’s failure. He wrote in 1874 to Turgenev that he was still astonished that this work had never been understood. He finally decided that the book lacked the falseness of perspective. Every work of art, he said, ought to have a point, a summit, make a pyramid . . . or better, the light should strike some point of the sphere. Now, there’s nothing of that sort in life. But Art is not nature! Here Flaubert partially understands that in this novel he has created a new genre—a genre from which modern novelists are still deriving richness of material and fullness of approach. Critics, including Henry James, have misunderstood the book’s conclusions because they were in no way dealing, here, with realism, naturalism or romance, but with satire of a high but hidden order.

There is no doubt that Sentimental Education is a difficult book to get the hang of, at first reading. The reader must have a fair working knowledge of reaction and revolution in nineteenth-century France. To use a figure of Lowes Dickinson, France was, throughout the century, politically in a state as though tracked by the Furies. It was a century of nervous unrest and of new and untried theory. And all the theories, once applied, backfired in the most appalling way. The revolt against the Bourbon line brought in the July monarchy (1830) and Louis-Philippe’s dead-weight bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, granted after 1848 and thought to be the instrument to establish the kingdom of God on earth, resulted only in Louis Bonaparte, and, after three years of the Second Republic, in the Second Empire. Paris fought for freedom; the provinces, fighting for the still unlaid ghosts of the old régime and of Napoleon, finally voted away the newly granted franchise itself. Added to the political melee was the social one. The Industrial Revolution struck France in the thirties, in the factories of Lyons. All political parties were thrown into the rise of money and the new concept of the right to work. The resulting confusion was severe. It is precisely this confusion, mirrored in the characters of the men and women who are at once its creators and its victims, that Flaubert here describes.

The book, written under the Second Empire, covers the period from September 1840 to Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état of December, 1851—save for the last two chapters, which form a coda to the whole. The action, excepting a few short passages, is seen through the eyes of Frederick Moreau, of the provincial landed class, newly come to Paris as the book begins to pass his law examinations. A new spirit is in the air. The tradition of Romanticism and of the Bohemian painter, writer and poet had worn almost completely threadbare. The period of the career based on money deals of one sort or another (Enrichissez-vous was said to be the counsel of Louis Philippe to his subjects) had begun. Art and industry, art and journalism, stood opposed, in spite of naive efforts to reconcile their purposes. (Industrial Art is the name of the magazine run by Arnoux, the husband of the woman Frederick comes to adore; the same paper under the unprincipled Hussonet begins under the name Art and ends up entitled The Man About Town.) Stock-jobbing, loans, investments and mortgages were the preoccupation of deputies and ministers. Borrowing a little money and making more, getting in with influential people, occupied the minds of law students, writers, painters and hangers-on. The movement of opportunism elaborates and expands into a mounting frenzy. Notes fall due; debts pile up; the fate of men and women depends upon the worth or worthlessness of shares. Bankruptcies, auctions, bailiffs finish the hopes of guilty and innocent alike. Underneath runs the theme of personal treachery. Friends betray one another; old men revenge themselves in their wills; women take it out on rivals by holding over them old debts and promissory notes.

The revolts of Republicans and the new Socialist against bourgeois rule form the book’s secondary theme. The theorists make plans and hold to rigid formulas. Spontaneous outbreaks of the people link up with the planned action of the revolutionaries. Barricades go up; arms are requisitioned from the citizens. The crowd swarms into the Tuilleries; pianos and clocks are flung out of windows. One of the novel’s great set-pieces describes the street fighting in 1848. And the book closes with Paris again under arms—the dragoons, aided by the police, galloping against the citizens under the gaslight with drawn sabres—and the Second Empire has begun.

Senecal, the democratic dogmatist who develops by degrees into a tyrant and member of the police, is the character which has astonished modern readers by its deadly accuracy and contemporary pertinence. Why, then, have you not got the volumes of the working-men poets? Senecal asks, when shown a library. He wants, in literature, content and not form. He thinks tableaux vivants demoralizing for the daughters of the proletariat. As a factory overseer, he extracts fines ruthlessly. Democracy, he remarks, is not the unbounded license of individualism. It is the equality of all belonging to the same community before the law, the distribution of work, order. You are forgetting humanity! Frederick answers. It is Senecal who kills Dussardier, the honest fellow, the believer in Socialist virtue, who attributed all the evil in the world to authority.

And Flaubert traces down an insane desire for authority, of whatever kind, in these people who have lost so many natural links to life. France, no longer feeling herself in command of the situation [after 1848] was beginning to shriek with terror, like a blind man without his stick or an infant that has lost its nurse. And the reader continues to recognize these characters (all of whom, according to Maxime du Camp, had prototypes in reality). There is something startlingly familiar in Hussonet, the journalist, who praises fifth rate, and fears first rate, minds. Arnoux, the intermediate type between Bohemian and businessman, infected with the failings of both—his intelligence was not high enough to attain to art, nor commonplace enough to desire merely profit, so without satisfying anyone, he had ruined himself—is closely akin to Frederick, who feels the resemblance. Arnoux is a gourmet and gives little dinners with ten sorts of mustard. Deslauriers, Frederick’s friend, in the words of the Goncourts, is, with his fond envy, his intermittences of perfidy and friendship, his solicitor’s temperament, a perfectly drawn type of the most widespread kind of scurvy humanity. Mlle Vatnatz, the emancipated woman, venomous, the dupe of her passions, a literary hack and go-between with a business head, is still not a complete grotesque.

Then there is the gallery of conservative humbugs, male and female, whom Flaubert does not spare. The fascination of self-interest equalled the madness of want . . . Property attained in the public regard the level of Religion, and was confounded with God. The attacks made on it appeared sacrilege, almost a species of cannibalism. But Flaubert was out to show up both sides of the picture. He examines with the same detachment the hysterics, terrorists and fakes on the fringes of the Socialist movement, and the conservative money and power jugglers with their distinguished circle, ready to grease the palm of any government that came into power. The stupidity of the workers’ meeting and the complicated spite of the dinner party are both analyzed. Flaubert wished to clear the reader’s mind of all accepted ideas concerning the supposed nobility of either group. Suddenly, at the end of the book, we look back and see how each category has received its touch of clearsightedness: these liberals who are at bottom neurotic reactionaries; these members of a new middle class who not only have no intellectual interests, who do not act according to motives of patience, pity, duty, charity or generosity, but actually do not know that such qualities exist. And has Flaubert exempted from his satiric justice of treatment the supposed projection of an actual life-long love, Mme Arnoux? She has been thought to stand in the book as an unclouded exponent of womanly sweetness and virtue. Is she not, rather, a sort of Madame Bovary in reverse—a woman who rejects passion because she pietistically fears God’s punishment, whose virtue brings her to the pass of offering herself, in age, to a man who suddenly recognizes the true incestuous nature of his devotion to her?

Within the prevalent atmosphere of fiasco, bafflement and fraud, Flaubert releases from time to time effects of tender comedy and moments of delicate and evocative description. He was working, we now realize, at the very beginning of impressionism, when the source was still fresh (Manet and Degas were slightly younger contemporaries). Emotional passages have behind them, over them and through them, the full beauty of the natural or man-made scene: architecture, landscape, weather, the seasons and the time of day. Light and shadow fall with varied precision; the slipperiness of the city pavement in the rain becomes part of Frederick’s passion as the sight of a kitchen garden in his native town becomes part of his melancholy. Details are often rendered with fantastic sharpness: the whole décor of the period, from lamp-lit interiors to the glitter of the equipages in the Champs Elysées—clothes, furniture, jewels, food, flower arrangement, coiffures, silver, china, carpets—become indelibly fixed in the reader’s mind. Color, sound and odor rise freshly from page after page—the scent of a meadow or of a woman’s perfume; the sound of a well-chain; the pink of a satin chair. It is the method which, although evident in Flaubert’s successors, has never been equalled by even the most gifted among them.

The psychological truth of the book’s two final chapters is profound. For in these two scenes Flaubert’s uncanny knowledge of the pathology of modern life becomes evident. The nostalgic reminiscence of Frederick and Deslauriers casting back over their youthful frightened visit to the prostitutes’ house, reveals the continuing infantilism of these two grown-up children who have never been able to lift themselves over the threshold of maturity, who cannot learn, who can only, in spite of some native generosity and decency, repeat. The modern split between emotion and reason stands revealed. Flaubert elsewhere remarks: You do not possess Christianity any more. What do you possess? Railroads, factories, chemists, mathematicians. Yes, the body fares better, the flesh does not suffer so much, but the heart continues to bleed. Material questions are resolved. Are the others? . . . And as you have not filled that eternal yawning gulf which every man carries in himself, I mock at your efforts, and laugh at your miserable sciences which are not worth a straw. Sentimental Education is a handbook to the present because the gulf of which Flaubert speaks, after nearly a century, has not been filled, but only widened and deepened. The thirst for some saving authority is still apparent; the intolerance has assumed new forms. Let us examine our theorists, Flaubert says, and throw out their false premises. Let us enlarge the provable human data. Have these nervous insurrections accomplished anything? Are we following the advanced notions of a parcel of buffoons ? Should the government of a country be a section of the Institute, and the last section of all?

Some partial answer lies in this novel, written in the ivory tower of Croisset and published one year before the inauspicious events of 1870, which ushered in the Third Republic.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

A PROMISING EPISODE

IN FRONT of the Quai St. Bernard, the Ville de Montereau, which was just about to start, was puffing great whirlwinds of smoke. It was six o’clock on the morning of the 15th of September, 1840.

People rushed on board the vessel in frantic haste. The traffic was obstructed by casks, cables, and baskets of linen. The sailors answered no questions. People jostled one another. Between the two paddle-boxes was a heap of parcels; the clamour was drowned in the loud hissing of the steam, which, making its way through the plates of sheet-iron, encompassed everything in a white mist, while the bell at the prow kept continuously ringing.

At last, the vessel drew away; and the banks of the river, crowded with warehouses, timber-yards, and manufactories, opened out like two huge ribbons being unrolled.

A young man about eighteen, with long hair, holding an album under his arm, stood motionless near the helm. Penetrating the haze, he could see steeples, buildings of which he did not know the names; then, with a farewell glance, he observed the Ile St. Louis, the Cité, and Nôtre Dame. As Paris faded from view he heaved a deep sigh.

Frederick Moreau had just taken his Bachelor’s degree, and was returning home to Nogent-sur-Seine, where he would have to lead a monotonous existence for two months, before going back to begin his legal studies. His mother had sent him, with enough money to cover his expenses, to Havre to see an uncle, from whom she had expectations of his receiving an inheritance. He had returned from there only yesterday; and he consoled himself for not having been able to spend a little time in the capital by taking the longest possible though less convenient route to reach his own part of the country.

The uproar had subsided. The passengers were all taking their places. Some of them stood warming themselves around the machinery, and the chimney spat forth with a slow, rhythmic rattle its plume of black smoke. Drops of dew glistened on the copper plates; the deck quivered with the vibration from within; and the two paddle-wheels, rapidly turning, lashed the water. The river edges were covered with sand. The vessel swept past rafts of wood which oscillated under the rippling of the waves, or a boat without sails in which a man sat fishing. Then the drifting haze cleared; the sun appeared; the hill which had been visible on the right of the Seine subsided by degrees, and another rose nearer on the opposite bank.

Frederick was thinking about the apartment which he would occupy over there, on the plan of a drama, on subjects for pictures, on future passions. He was beginning to find that the happiness merited by the excellence of his soul was slow in arriving. He declaimed some melancholy verses as he walked rapidly along the deck till he reached the end at which the bell was. In the centre of a group of passengers and sailors he saw a gentleman talking soft nothings to a country-woman, while fingering the gold cross which she wore over her breast. He was a jovial blade of forty, with frizzled hair. He wore a jacket of black velvet, two emeralds sparkled in his cambric shirt, and his wide, white trousers fell over odd-looking red boots of Russia leather ornamented with blue designs.

The presence of Frederick did not discompose him. He turned round and glanced several times at the young man with winks of inquiry. He next offered cigars to all who were standing near him. But, apparently getting tired of their society, he moved away and took a seat further up. Frederick followed him.

The conversation, at first, was on the various kinds of tobacco, then quite naturally it turned into a discussion about women. The gentleman in the red boots gave the younger man advice; he put forward theories, related anecdotes, referred to himself by way of illustration, and he gave utterance to all these things in a paternal tone, with the ingenuousness of entertaining depravity.

He was republican in his opinions. He had travelled; was familiar with the inner life of theatres, restaurants, and newspapers, and knew all the theatrical celebrities, whom he spoke of by their first names. Frederick told him confidentially about his projects; and the elder man took an encouraging view of them.

He stopped talking a moment to take a look at the funnel, then he mumbled rapidly a long calculation in order to ascertain how much each stroke of the piston at so many times per minute would come to, etc., and, having found the number, he spoke about the scenery, which he admired immensely. Then he expressed his delight at having got away from business.

Frederick regarded him with a certain amount of respect, and politely intimated a desire to know his name. The stranger, without a moment’s hesitation, replied:

"Jacques Arnoux, proprietor of L’Art Industriel, Boulevard Montmartre."

A man-servant in a gold-laced cap came up and said:

Would Monsieur have the kindness to go below? Mademoiselle is crying.

L’Art Industriel was a hybrid establishment, wherein the functions of an art journal and a picture-shop were combined. Frederick remembered seeing this title several times in the bookseller’s window in his native place on big prospectuses, on which the name of Jacques Arnoux displayed itself magisterially.

The sun’s rays fell perpendicularly, shedding a glittering light on the iron hoops around the masts, the plates of the barricades, and the surface of the water, which, at the prow, was cut into two furrows that spread out as far as the borders of the meadows. At each curve of the river, a screen of pale poplars presented itself with the utmost uniformity. The surrounding country at this point had an empty look. In the sky were little white clouds which remained motionless, and the sense of weariness, which vaguely diffused itself over everything, seemed to retard the progress of the steamboat and to add to the insignificant appearance of the passengers. With the exception of a few persons of good position who were travelling first class, they consisted of artisans or shopmen with their wives and children. It was customary at that time to wear old clothes when travelling, so nearly all had their heads covered with shabby Greek caps or discoloured hats, and wore thin black coats that had become threadbare from constant rubbing against writing-desks, or frock-coats with the casings of their buttons loose from continual service in the shop. Here and there some roll-collar waistcoat afforded a glimpse of a coffee-stained calico shirt. Pinchbeck pins were stuck into torn cravats. List shoes were kept up by stitched straps.

Frederick, in order to get back to his place, pushed against the grating leading into the part of the vessel reserved for first-class passengers, and in so doing disturbed two sportsmen with their dogs.

What he then saw was like a vision. She was seated in the middle of a bench all alone, or, at least it appeared so to him; he could see no one else, dazzled as he was by her eyes. At the moment when he was passing, she raised her head; his shoulders bent involuntarily; and, when he had seated himself, some little distance away, on the same side, he glanced toward her.

She wore a wide straw hat, the red ribbons of which fluttered in the wind behind her. Her black tresses, braided around the top of her large forehead, descended very low near her cheeks, and seemed amorously to press the oval of her face. Her robe of muslin spotted with green spread out in ample folds. She was embroidering something; and her straight nose, her rounded chin, her entire person was outlined on the background of the luminous air and the blue sky.

As she maintained the same attitude, he took several turns to the right and to the left, hiding from her his change of position; then he placed himself close to her parasol, which lay against the bench, and pretended to be looking at a sloop on the river.

Never before had he seen such a lustrous dark skin, such a seductive figure, or more delicately shaped fingers than those through which the sunlight gleamed. He gazed with amazement at her work-basket, as if it were something unusual. What was her name, her place of residence, her life, her past? He longed to become familiar with the furnishings of her apartment, with the dresses that she had worn, with the people whom she visited; and the desire of physical possession yielded to a deeper yearning, a painful and boundless curiosity.

A negress, wearing a silk handkerchief tied round her head, appeared, holding by the hand a little girl already tall for her age. The child, whose eyes were swimming in tears, had just awakened. The lady took the little one on her knees. Mademoiselle was not good, though she would soon be seven; her mother would not love her any more. She was too often forgiven for being naughty. And Frederick heard those things with delight, as if he had made a discovery, an acquisition.

He concluded that she must be of Andalusian descent, perhaps a creole: had she brought this negress with her from the West Indian Islands?

Meanwhile his attention was directed to a long shawl with violet stripes thrown behind her over the copper support of the bench. She must have, many a time, wrapped it around her, as the vessel sped through the waves; drawn it over her feet, gone to sleep in it!

Frederick suddenly noticed that with the sweep of its fringes it was slipping off, and on the point of falling into the water; with a bound he caught it. She said:

Thank you, Monsieur.

Their eyes met.

Are you ready, my dear? cried my lord Arnoux, presenting himself at the hood of the companion-ladder.

Mademoiselle Marthe ran over to him, and, clinging to his neck, she began pulling at his moustache. The strains of a harp were heard—she wanted to see the music played; and presently the performer on the instrument, at the request of the negress, entered the place reserved for saloon passengers. Arnoux recognised in him a man who had formerly been a model, and thou’d him, to the astonishment of the by-standers. At length the harpist, flinging back his long hair, stretched out his hands and began playing.

It was an Oriental ballad all about poniards, flowers, and stars. The man in rags sang it in a sharp voice; the twanging of the harp-strings broke the harmony of the tune with false notes. He played more vigorously: the chords vibrated, and their metallic sounds seemed to emit sobs, and, as it were, the plaint of a proud and vanquished love. On both sides of the river, woods reached down to the edge of the water. A current of fresh air swept past, and Madame Arnoux gazed vaguely into the distance. When the music stopped, she moved her eyes as if she were starting out of a dream.

The harpist approached them with an air of humility. While Arnoux was searching his pockets for money, Frederick stretched out toward the cap his closed hand, and then, opening it in a shamefaced manner, he deposited in the cap a louis d’or. It was not vanity that had prompted him to bestow this alms in her presence, but the hope of a blessing in which he felt she might share—an almost religious impulse of the heart.

Arnoux, leading the way, cordially invited him to go below. Frederick replied that he had just lunched; on the contrary, he was nearly dying of hunger; but he had not a single centime in his purse.

After that, it seemed to him that he had as much right as anyone else to remain in the cabin.

Ladies and gentlemen were seated before round tables, lunching, while an attendant went about serving coffee. Monsieur and Madame Arnoux were in the extreme right-hand corner. He seated himself on the long bench covered with velvet, picking up a newspaper which he found there.

They would have to take the diligence at Montereau for Châlons. Their tour in Switzerland would last a month. Madame Arnoux blamed her husband for his weakness with the child. He whispered in her ear; it was evidently something agreeable, for she smiled. Then he rose to draw down the window curtain at her back. Under the low, white ceiling, a crude light filled the cabin. Frederick, sitting opposite, could distinguish the shadow made by her eyelashes. She just moistened her lips at her glass and broke a little piece of crust between her fingers. The lapis-lazuli locket fastened by a gold chain to her wrist made a ringing sound, every now and then, as it touched her plate. Those present, however, did not appear to notice it.

At intervals one could see, through the port-holes, the side of a boat which was taking away passengers or putting them on board. Those who sat round the tables looked through the openings, and called out the names of the various places they passed along the river.

Arnoux complained of the cooking. He grumbled particularly at the amount of the bill, and had it reduced. Then he carried off the young man toward the forecastle to drink a glass of grog with him. But Frederick speedily returned to gaze at Madame Arnoux, who had gone back to her seat under the awning. She was reading a thin, grey-covered volume. From time to time the corners of her mouth curled and a gleam of pleasure lighted up her face. He felt jealous of the author of a book which appeared to interest her so much. The more he contemplated her, the more he felt that there were yawning abysses between them. He was reflecting that he should very soon lose sight of her irrevocably, and without having extracted a few words from her, without leaving her even a souvenir!

On the right, a plain was visible. On the left, a strip of pasture-land rose gently to meet a hillock where one could see vineyards, groups of walnut-trees, a mill embedded in the grassy slopes, and, beyond that, little zigzag paths over a white mass of rocks that reached up toward the clouds. What bliss it would have been to ascend side by side with her, his arm around her waist, as her gown swept the yellow leaves, listening to her voice and gazing into her glowing eyes! The steamboat might stop, and all they would have to do would be to step right out; and yet this thing, simple as it seemed, was not less difficult than it would have been to alter the course of the sun.

The little girl kept skipping playfully around the place where he had stationed himself on the deck. Frederick tried to kiss her. She hid herself behind her nurse. Her mother scolded her for not being nice to the gentleman who had rescued her own shawl. Was this an indirect overture?

Is she going to speak to me? he asked himself.

Time was flying. How was he to get an invitation to the Arnoux’s house? And he could think of nothing better than to draw her attention to the autumnal hues, adding:

We are approaching winter—the season of balls and dinner-parties.

But Arnoux was entirely occupied with his luggage. They had arrived at the river’s bank facing Surville. The two bridges drew nearer. They passed a ropewalk, then a range of low-built houses, inside which there were pots of tar and splinters of wood; and children ran along the sand turning head over heels. Frederick recognised a man with a sleeved waistcoat, and called out to him:

Make haste.

They were at the landing-place. He looked around anxiously for Arnoux amongst the crowd of passengers, and presently the other came and shook hands with him, saying:

A pleasant time, Monsieur!

When he was on the quay, Frederick looked back. She was standing beside the helm. He cast a look toward her into which he tried to put his whole soul. She remained motionless, as if nothing had happened. Then, without paying the slightest attention to the obeisances of his manservant:

Why is not the trap here?

The man made excuses.

Clumsy fellow! Give me some money.

And after that he went off to get something to eat at an inn.

A quarter of an hour later, he felt an inclination to turn into the coachyard, as if by chance. He might see her again.

What’s the use? he said to himself.

The vehicle carried him off. The two horses did not belong to his mother. She had borrowed one from M. Chambrion, the tax-collector. Isidore, having set forth the day before, had taken a rest at Bray until evening, and had slept at Montereau, so that the animals, with restored vigour, were trotting briskly.

Fields on which the crops had been cut stretched out in apparently endless succession; and by degrees Villeneuve, St. Georges, Ablon, Châtillon, Corbeil, and the other places—his entire journey—came back to his mind with such vividness that he could recall fresh details, more intimate particulars. . . . Under the lowest flounce of her gown, her foot showed itself encased in a dainty silk boot of maroon shade. The awning made of ticking formed a wide canopy over her head, and the little red tassels of the edging kept trembling in the breeze.

She resembled the women of whom he had read in romances. Nothing could be added to the charms of her person, and nothing could be taken from them. The universe had suddenly enlarged. She was the luminous point toward which all things converged; and, lulled by the movement of the vehicle, with half-closed eyes, and his face turned toward the clouds, he abandoned himself to a dreamy, infinite joy.

At Bray, he did not wait till the horses had got their oats; he walked on along the road by himself. Arnoux addressed her as Marie. He now loudly repeated the name Marie! His voice pierced the air and was lost in the distance.

The sky toward the west was one great mass of flaming purple. Huge stacks of wheat, rising up in the midst of the stubble fields, threw giant shadows. A dog barked in a distant farm-house. He shivered, seized with disquietude for which he could assign no cause.

When Isidore came up with him, he jumped into the front seat to drive. His fit of weakness was over. He had thoroughly made up his mind to effect an introduction into the house of the Arnoux, and to become intimate with them. Their house should be entertaining; besides, he liked Arnoux; then—you never can tell! Thereupon a wave of blood rushed up to his face; his temples throbbed; he cracked his whip, shook the reins, and set the horses going at such a pace that the old coachman repeatedly exclaimed:

Easy! easy now, or they’ll get broken-winded!

Gradually Frederick calmed down, and he attended to what the man was saying. Monsieur’s return was impatiently awaited. Mademoiselle Louise had cried to go in the trap to meet him.

Who, pray, is Mademoiselle Louise?

Monsieur Roque’s little girl, you know.

Ah, yes! I had forgotten, rejoined Frederick carelessly.

Meanwhile, the two horses could keep up the furious pace no longer. They were both getting lame; nine o’clock struck at St. Laurent’s when he arrived at the parade in front of his mother’s house.

This large house, with a garden looking out on the open country, conferred additional social importance on Madame Moreau, who was the most respected lady in the district.

She had descended from an old family of nobles, of which the male line was now extinct. Her husband, a plebeian whom her parents had forced her to marry, met his death by a sword-thrust, during her pregnancy, leaving a much encumbered estate. She received visitors three times a week, and from time to time gave a fashionable dinner. But the number of wax candles was calculated beforehand, and she looked forward with impatience to the payment of her rents. These pecuniary embarrassments, concealed as if there were some guilt attached to them, imparted a certain gravity to her character. Nevertheless, she displayed no prudery, no sourness, in the practice of her particular virtues. Her most trifling charities seemed munificent alms. She was consulted about the selection of servants, the education of young girls, and the art of making preserves, and Monseigneur used to stay at her house on the occasion of his episcopal visitations.

Madame Moreau cherished a lofty ambition for her son. Through a prudence which was grounded on the expectation of favours, she did not care to hear blame cast on the Government. He would require patronage at first; then, with such aid, he might become a councillor of state, an ambassador, a minister. His success at the college of Sens justified this proud anticipation; had he not carried off the prize of honour?

When he entered the drawing-room, all present arose noisily; he was embraced; then the chairs, large and small, were drawn up in a big semicircle around the fireplace. M. Gamblin immediately asked him what his opinion was about Madame Lafarge. This case, the rage of the moment, did not fail to lead to a violent discussion. Madame Moreau stopped it, to the regret, however, of M. Gamblin; he deemed it serviceable to the young man in his character of a future lawyer, and, nettled at what had occurred, he left the drawing-room.

Nothing done by a friend of Père Roque should have caused surprise. The reference to Père Roque led them to speak of M. Dambreuse, who had lately become the owner of the demesne of La Fortelle. But the tax-collector had drawn Frederick aside to ask what he thought of M. Guizot’s latest work. They were all anxious to know about his private affairs, and Madame Benoit went cleverly to work, with that end in view, by inquiring about his uncle. How was that worthy relative? They no longer heard from him. Had he not a distant cousin in America?

The cook announced that Monsieur’s soup was served. The guests discreetly retired. As soon as they were alone in the dining-room, his mother said to him in a low tone:

Well?

The old man had received him in a very cordial manner, but had not disclosed his intentions.

Madame Moreau sighed.

Where is she now? was his thought.

The diligence was probably rolling along the road, and, wrapped up in the shawl, doubtless, she was leaning against the cloth of the coupé, her beautiful head nodding as she slept.

He and his mother were about to go up to their apartments when a waiter from the Swan of the Cross brought him a note.

What is that, pray?

It is Deslauriers, who wishes to see me, said he.

Ha! your chum! said Madame Moreau, with a contemptuous sneer. Certainly it is a nice hour to choose!

Frederick hesitated. But friendship was stronger. He got his hat.

His mother requested him to return quickly.

CHAPTER II

THE WISDOM OF YOUTH

THE FATHER of Charles Deslauriers was an ex-captain in the line. He had retired from the service in 1818 and returned to Nogent, where he had married.With the amount of the dowry he bought up the business of a process-server, which barely maintained him. Made bitter by continuous unjust treatment, suffering still from the effects of old wounds, and always regretting the Emperor, he vented on those around him the fits of rage that seemed to choke him. Few children received so many thrashings as did his son. In spite of blows, however, the child remained obstinate. His mother, when she interposed, was also ill-treated. Finally, the captain placed the boy in his office, and all day long kept him bent over a desk copying documents, with the result that his right shoulder was noticeably higher than his left.

In 1833, on the invitation of the president, the captain sold his office. His wife died of cancer. He then went to live at Dijon and started in business at Troyes, where he was connected with the slave trade. Having obtained a small scholarship for Charles, he placed him at the college of Sens, where Frederick met him. But one of the boys was twelve years old, while the other was fifteen; besides, a thousand differences of character and origin tended to keep them apart.

Frederick had in his chest of drawers all sorts of useful things—choice articles, such as a dressing-case would indicate. He liked to lie in bed in the mornings, to look at the swallows, and to read plays; and, missing the comforts of home, he thought college life rough. To the process-server’s son it seemed a pleasant existence. He worked so hard that, at the end of the second year, he got into the third form. However, owing to his poverty or to his quarrelsome disposition, he was intensely disliked. But when on one occasion, in the courtyard where pupils of the middle grade exercised, an attendant openly called him a beggar’s child, he sprang at the fellow’s throat, and would have killed him if three of the ushers had not intervened. Frederick, moved by admiration, pressed him in his arms. From that day forward they were fast friends. The affection of a grandee no doubt flattered the vanity of the youth of meaner rank, and the other accepted as a piece of good fortune the devotion freely offered to him. During the holidays Charles’s father left him in the college. A translation of Plato which he chanced on excited his enthusiasm. He became smitten with a love of metaphysical studies; and he made rapid progress, for he came to the subject with all the energy of youth and the self-confidence of an emancipated intellect. Jouffroy, Cousin, Laromiguière, Malebranche, and the Scotch metaphysicians—everything that the library contained dealing with this branch of knowledge passed through his hands. He even stole the key in order to get at the books.

Frederick’s intellectual distractions were of a less serious description. He made sketches of the genealogy of Christ as carved on a post in the Rue des Trois Rois, then of the gateway of a cathedral. After a course of mediæval dramas, he turned to memoirs—Froissart, Comines, Pierre de l’Estoile, and Brantôme.

The impressions left on his mind by this kind of reading impressed him to such an extent that he felt a need within him of reproducing those pictures of bygone days. His ambition was to be, one day, the Walter Scott of France. Deslauriers dreamed of formulating an exhaustive system of philosophy, calculated to have the most far-reaching results.

They conversed on all these matters at recreation hours, in the playground, in front of the moral maxim inscribed under the clock. They whispered to each other about them in the chapel, even with St. Louis staring down at them. They dreamed about them in the dormitory, which looked out on a burial-ground. On walking-days they took up a position behind the others, and talked unceasingly.

They spoke of what they would do later, when they had left college. First of all, they would set out on a long voyage with the money which Frederick would take out of his own fortune immediately on reaching his majority. Then they would return to Paris; they would work together, and would never part; and, as a relaxation from their labours, they would have love-affairs with princesses in boudoirs lined with satin, or dazzling orgies with famous courtesans. Their rapturous day-dreams were followed by doubts. After a crisis of verbose gaiety, they would often lapse into a long silence.

On summer evenings, when they had been walking for some time over stony paths which bordered on vineyards, or on the highroad in the open country, and when they saw the wheat waving in the sunlight, while the air was filled with the fragrance of angelica, a sort of suffocating sensation overpowered them, and they stretched themselves on their backs, dizzy, intoxicated.

The proctor maintained that they mutually cried up each other. Nevertheless, if Frederick worked his way up to the higher forms, it was through the persuasions of his friend; and, during the vacation in 1837, he often brought Deslauriers to his mother’s house.

Madame Moreau did not like the young man. He had a terrible appetite. He was fond of making republican speeches. To crown all, she got it into her head that he had been the means of leading her son into improper places. Their relations toward each other were watched. This only made their friendship grow stronger, and they bade one another adieu with deep sorrow when, a year later, Deslauriers left the college to study law in Paris.

Frederick anxiously looked forward to the time when they would meet again. For two years they had not seen each other; and, when their embraces were over, they walked across the bridges to talk more at their ease.

The captain, who had set up a billiard-room at Villenauxe, had become very angry when his son demanded an account of the expense of tutelage, and even cut down the cost of food to the lowest figure. As he intended to become a candidate later for a professor’s chair at the school, and as he had no money, Deslauriers accepted the post of principal clerk in an attorney’s office at Troyes. By dint of sheer privation he spared four thousand francs; and by not drawing upon the sum which came to him through his mother, he would always have enough to enable him to work freely for three years while waiting for a better position. It was necessary, therefore, to abandon their former plan of living together in the capital, at least for the present.

Frederick hung down his head. This was the first of his dreams to crumble into dust.

Be comforted, said the captain’s son. Life is long. We are both young. We shall meet again. Think no more of it!

He shook the other’s hand warmly, and, to distract his attention, questioned him at length about his journey.

Frederick had little to tell. But, at the recollection of Madame Arnoux, his vexation disappeared. He did not mention her, restrained by a feeling of bashfulness. He made up for this by expatiating on Arnoux, recalling his talk, his agreeable manner, his stories; and Deslauriers urged him strongly to cultivate this new acquaintance.

Frederick had of late written nothing. His literary opinions were changed. Passion was now supreme in his estimation. He was equally enthusiastic over Werther, René, Franck, Lara, Lélia, and other imaginative creations of less merit. Sometimes it seemed to him that music alone was capable of giving expression to his internal agitation; he dreamed of symphonies; or else the surface of things attracted him, and he longed to paint. He had, however, written verses. Deslauriers considered them beautiful, but did not suggest that he should write another poem.

As for himself, he had given up metaphysics. Social economy and the French Revolution absorbed all his attention. He was a tall fellow of twenty-two, thin, with a wide mouth, and a resolute air. On this particular evening, he wore a poor-looking paletôt of lasting; and his shoes were white with dust, for he had come all the way from Villenauxe on foot expressly to see Frederick.

Isidore appeared while they were talking. Madame begged of Monsieur to return home, and, for fear of catching cold, she had sent him his heavy cloak.

Wait a while! said Deslauriers. And they continued walking from one end to the other of the two bridges which rest on the narrow islet formed by the canal and the river.

On the side toward Nogent they had immediately in front of them a block of houses which projected a little. At the right was the church, behind the mills, whose sluices had been closed up; and, on the left, were the hedges, covered with shrubs, skirting the wood, and forming a boundary for the gardens, which could scarcely be distinguished. On the side toward Paris the high road formed a sheer descending line, and the meadows lost themselves in the distance amid the vapours of the night. Silence reigned along this road, whose white track gleamed through the surrounding gloom. Odours of damp leaves ascended toward them. The waterfall, where the stream had been

Reviews for Sentimental Education

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Say what you will about Woody Allen, he was right to recommend 'Sentimental Education' as one of the greatest pieces of literature the world has ever produced. In this masterpiece Flaubert has managed to assemble all of the great tropes of French literature - the naivete of youth, passion, mistresses, financial despair, death and disease, and, of course, revolution.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vooral stilistisch (sober, trefzeker) heel knap portret van de revolutionaire sfeer, midden 19de eeuw. Eigenlijk een Bildungsroman van een mislukte jongeling. Zeer negatieve levensvisie.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vooral stilistisch (sober, trefzeker) heel knap portret van de revolutionaire sfeer, midden 19de eeuw. Eigenlijk een Bildungsroman van een mislukte jongeling. Zeer negatieve levensvisie.

[tungsten_peerts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh how I loved this book. I also love how the reviews here show that people just don't get it.

[anniejanicki · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

You can see the birth of the postmodern in this book. You could probably trace a direct line somehow - a literary genealogy of sorts, from this book to Zadie Smith's On Beauty, for instance. Everything planned by everyone in it turns out to be sadly futile, in the end. Real lives may at times be like that. Literature should not be. I understand that this book wasn't nearly as popular in Flaubert's time as Madame Bovary, and I see why. Emma Bovary may have come to a sad end, but nobody can say she didn't try. If nothing else, she had spirit. Frederic, the protagonist of this book - well, there's a line in an old song by Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues, "I could have been someone," the singer says, and Kirsty replies, "Well, so could anyone." It's what you'd like to tell Frederic. There were a thousand roads he could've taken at any point. If he'd only bothered to venture down any one of them, he could've been someone. The story of a life wasted does not make for an entertaining read.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

What is it about Flaubert? He writes novels drawing on his amoral life. This appeals to some who call this a great, influential novel - among the "some" were contemporary French authors of similar lifestyles. I found this book tedious.

[anniehidalgo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

You can see the birth of the postmodern in this book. You could probably trace a direct line somehow - a literary genealogy of sorts, from this book to Zadie Smith's On Beauty, for instance. Everything planned by everyone in it turns out to be sadly futile, in the end. Real lives may at times be like that. Literature should not be. I understand that this book wasn't nearly as popular in Flaubert's time as Madame Bovary, and I see why. Emma Bovary may have come to a sad end, but nobody can say she didn't try. If nothing else, she had spirit. Frederic, the protagonist of this book - well, there's a line in an old song by Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues, "I could have been someone," the singer says, and Kirsty replies, "Well, so could anyone." It's what you'd like to tell Frederic. There were a thousand roads he could've taken at any point. If he'd only bothered to venture down any one of them, he could've been someone. The story of a life wasted does not make for an entertaining read.

[poquette_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paris in 1840 had a population of just under a million. Just think of all the horses and carriages and people bustling around, and this was about a decade before the great transformations the city underwent during the regime of Napoleon III and his civic planner Haussmann when the great wide boulevards were established.In 1840 Frédéric Moreau, the protagonist of Sentimental Education, was eighteen years old. The novel opens as a paddlewheel steamboat is about to depart from Paris, continuing its voyage up the Seine from Le Havre where Frédéric had gone to visit his uncle. Frédéric 's family home is in Nogent-sur-Seine, where he is now headed. As fate would have it, he encounters on board a married couple, Monsieur and Madame Arnaux, who will play a significant role in his eventual Parisian sojourn — and not for the better as it turns out.Well born and with bright prospects ahead of him, he is sent off to Paris to attend law school. He has become obsessed with Madame Arnaux while at the same time cultivating a friendship with the husband. Frédéric 's obsession eventually interferes with his ability to concentrate on his studies, and it soon becomes apparent that his ambitions exceed his abilities. Adultery was something that men seemed to take for granted and married women in general had as ever a very dim view of it. Frédéric 's assumption that it was okay for him to be an interloper into another man's marriage was a commonplace.The entire novel concerns itself with Frédéric 's mediocre self, his mediocre friends, and his intrigues with various women over a ten-year period and on whom he squanders three-quarters of his fortune. When he is presented with a real opportunity to advance himself, he passes up an appointment with an influential aristocrat because he finds it more important to follow Madame Arnaux into the countryside.All of Frédéric 's various intrigues take place against a backdrop of the political, social and cultural realities of the time. We see the Revolution of 1848 from the point of view of young men who actually participated.Flaubert's descriptions — whether they concern street fights or dinner parties, masked balls or political harangues — are vivid and quite compelling, and it is the background that actually drives the novel. Frédéric is hopeless, and one wishes that he will stop sleepwalking through his own life and make some sort of breakthrough, but it never happens. Many of his friends who also showed some promise as young men, suffer a similar lack of success, but for different reasons. As one of his friends said to him when looking back on their lives in retrospect, "I had too much logic, and you too much sentiment." This pretty much sums it up.Sentimental Education is a fascinating artifact of its time, and an excellent example of Flaubert's Realism and his deeply ironic view of society, but in some ways it represents no advancement at all beyond Madame Bovary. It is merely another chronicle of an adulterous life, but with less drastic consequences.

[xieouyang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I became interested in this novel after my latest re-read of Madame Bovary, a novel that I love. This one was worthwhile reading. Partly because it dealt with some detail on the revolution of 1848 in France, one of several European countries with uprisings against the governments in that year, and partly because it was very well written. My edition of the novel is one of Barnes & Noble Classics books, that I like because they typically have a good introduction plus plenty of footnotes and end notes. In this case, both were useful both for explaining some events and identifying the 'real' personages that populate the novel. The core of the novel hinges around the growth of a young man, Frederic Moreau, who wants to move up in the world of society. Born in the small town of Nogent, with limited means, sees as his way to prosper by engaging or marrying a woman of means. At the same time, he feels that he must get a mistress- preferably of means too, naturally. He goes through several liasons and his passion for them ebbs and flows depending on how much they seem to have. His indecision leads him to missing on the best opportunity he had when he decides to marry a neighbor girl of his when they were young children, only to find out that she is marrying one of his friends. Typical of most 18th or 19th century European novels, the characters see either an inheritance or marriage the ways to become rich. It's hardly ever hard work or dedication, but rather an unexpected turn of luck when one of their uncles dies and leaves them a rich inheritance. It's a perverse way of looking at the world. I see today's equivalent in the hope many people put on winning the lottery. Also, business people are most often depicted as not honorable people- they gain at the expense of others or society. Back to the novel. I found it generally very engaging and a fast read. Although it's long (the B&N version is about 480 pages of small script) I couldn't put it down and had to figure out ways to get back to reading it.

[drfp_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Flaubert himself said it best about this book: "The setting in which my characters move is so copious and so swarming that with every line they are almost swallowed up by it. I am thus obliged to push into the background the things that are precisely the most interesting. I merely touch on lots of things that readers will want to see treated in depth."And that is my main problem with Sentimental Education - that it tries to cover too much and as a result everyone and everything receives naught but a shallow treatment. The era is fantastically interesting but Flaubert only drops various passing references to real events. Certain fictional events within the book take place that are quite scathing towards people of that era and it's a shame that these happenings are so inadequately developed. The same is true of the characters. Many flit in and out with little consequence. Even our leads spend so much time rushing from one event to another that we're denied a deep impression of them.It makes for a somewhat frustrating book. The book is far more readable than Madame Bovary (and far more likeable too, in my opinion) but it lacks that earlier work's strict focus. Perhaps if it were the length of War and Peace it could really have worked? As it is it's an entertaining read but one that's too slight to leave a strong impression.

[luli81_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An educational reading indeed, either spiritually or rationally speaking.The novel talks about the life of a young man, Frederic, during the French Revolution and the founding of the French Empire in 1848. It is said that Frederic is in fact Flaubert himself telling about some real events in his life and of course about his platonic love for an older woman, in the book, called Mme Arnoux. We are able to follow, with a somehow ironic and pessimistic tone, a different set of characters who live the important changes of the era, from the Republican idealist Sénecal to the well off banker Mr. Dambruese, passing several courtesans and artists on the way. The book combines highly advanced politics with almost philosophical wanderings such as existence and death , passion and love, morality and justice... Each character represents an icon, Mme Arnoux, unattainable perfection; Rosannette, troubled and used courtesan; Deslauries, ambitious and envious middle class lawyer; all of them combine into a well constructed scenery which engulfs you into the story, even if you don't want to.The book left me wondering if a man is to be judged by the result of his actions or by his good intentions. The answer might not be as easy as it seems after you've read Frederic's story. A book that shouldn't be missed by those who appreciate a smart and eloquent reading. I think this work outperforms Flaubert's "Madame Bovary".

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

1002 Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert translated by Anthony Goldsmith (read 14 Mar 1969) A story of exasperating people who act so contrary to anything sensible, I was nevertheless tremendously moved by it for reasons hard to state. The style, at least in translation, is jerky--but fast-moving. Laid in France in the 1840's and up to 1851, it has as background the reign of Louis Phillippe, the revolution of 1848, etc. Frederick Moreau (no hero to me) falls in love with Madame Arnoux, and so takes after, naturally, Rossamette, Mme. Dumbreuse, etc. Mme. Arnoux is the unattainable. The plot is about that--no more. But so--what more plot was there to Roger Martin du Gard?

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this novel for the most part. I enjoy the French romantic phrasing. Flaubert creates a truly remarkable character in Frederique, a young man who exemplifies all that it terrible about the upper class, and he must live with the consequences of his actions. The primary themes of the book include: true love, passion, idealism, betrayal, egocentrism of both men and women, manipulation, dishonesty......all the great makings of a wonderful novel. The only negative to me is that the love, confusion, betrayal cycle is repeated a bit much which belabors the point.. The "sentimental educaiton" is not learned until late in adulthood, what a pity!

[shawnd_72 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

When is a classic not a classic? Perhaps when a book has too much going for it: brilliant author, contemporary political events that will define the century, a story that is just wonderful. A Sentimental Education has all these things. However, reading it was a little like eating jam on a bed of jam with no toast. Flaubert in this book tells the story of a young man just finishing college and the course of his life until old age--a better title might have been 'A Sentimental Life', because it's not clear that much education happened at all throughout the book. In fact, the protagonist continues to struggle with a life strategy throughout the book that seems to have more cost than benefit. The youth while not poor has been thrust due to his upbringing in somewhat upper crust circles into society where he struggles to maintain his habits and appearance. While doing just enough work to skate by, he sees and falls madly in love with a married woman. The book tells the story of his life-long attempt to get closer to her and his trials, travails, adventures along the way. Unfortunately, instead of writing what could be a novel very similar to Anna Karenina, both in plot and quality of writing, Flaubert stuffs almost as much political history and debate into the book right alongside. Imaging reading War and Peace and any of the War sections were substituted with characters philosophizing, debating the future of France, Bonaparte, Republicanism, and on and on. It would be a rare reader who would want to keep up with all the historic references, mentions of politicians, philosophers, events, theories and more. Split into two books, perhaps each is a winning effort, however together it's a wonderful love story and classical romance with persistent stultifying breaks into French history.

[gwendolyndawson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A young man and his lifelong love for an older, married woman. Depicts the social depravity of a certain class of men in France in the late 1800s.