Flaubert's Education Sentimental: Dissecting a Generation of Losers

I remember being deeply impressed many years ago by reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary, published in 1856. I thought then, and still do today, that it is one of the finest novels I've ever read. It is a tragedy of her obsession with love and the fatal consequences of following it regardless of the profoundly flawed man she becomes infatuated with.

In his novel Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man, published in 1869, Flaubert deals with similar themes on a broader, more ambitious scale. He takes aim at a whole generation of individuals, each failing in their life goals. The novel focuses initially on Frederic Moreau, a young man reaching adulthood during the 1848 revolution, in which King Louis Philippe abdicated, the workers' uprising in June 1848, and the establishment of the Second Republic at the end of that year—a truly momentous time in French political history.

Education Sentimental casts a somewhat sceptical and beady eye, full of highly evocative descriptions, over the capacity of French youth of the time to rise to the challenges of life both in 'affairs of the heart' and in their work; what they did, either to achieve their heart's desire at the personal level or engage with these significant sea changes in French society. Frederick Moreau and his close friend Deslauriers are childhood friends and confidants. Deslauriers is depicted as intelligent and ambitious, but unlike Moreau, he approaches life pragmatically. Deslauriers is a foil to Moreau's idealism, often providing him with advice and challenging his romantic notions. He and Frederick actually fall out and never really recover their close childhood friendship.

We first meet Frederick Moreau, 18 years old, young, idealistic, and full of hopes and dreams for the future.

Flaubert wrote of the work in 1864: "I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation—or, more accurately, the history of their feelings. It's a book about love, about passion, but passion such as can exist nowadays—that is to say, inactive." At the novel's beginning, Flaubert writes of Frederick: 'The happiness his noble soul deserved seemed a long time coming.' He is on a boat trip up the Seine heading towards Le Havre. He is poor, lower middle class. He pushes the gate to the First Class area and sees her; 'It was like an apparition. She was sitting all alone, or at least so it appeared to him, so dazzling was the light from her eyes...She resembled the women he had read about in romances... The universe had suddenly enlarged. She was the luminous point towards which all things converged.' He never really recovers from his idealisation of her. He is incapable of realising his dream and actually taking steps to make his romantic dream come true.

Frederic is stuck, and an incapacity of will paralyses him. He is in permanent stagnation. He is silent, willing her to understand how much he adores her as if she were a mind reader. "Since the morning, he had been looking for an opportunity to declare himself, and now it had arrived. But when he was seated next to her, he began to feel embarrassed again. He was at a loss for a starting point.'

It is, in some ways, quite a depressing story of an unfulfilled, inadequate generation seen through the lens of two men in particular, Frederick and Deslauriers; at the start, full of youthful aspirations as 18-year-old youths who remain unfulfilled and, as individuals, frustrated and disappointed, of lives not amounting to very much: Much Ado About Nothing.

As the novel continues, it is apparent that Frederick is swanning about not doing much with his day. When opportunities occasionally arise to declare his love for Marie Arnaux and win her for his own, he blows the opportunity. Hence, despite Frederic's many opportunities, he cannot move forward. However blinding the first impression she makes on him, he seems incapable of breaking free and making his desire for her a living reality. Marie Arnaux seems, in any case, to be an inappropriate focus for his adulation. She is ten years older than him and married to an adulterous upper middle-class banker with two growing children.

Politically, Frederick, who claimed to be ambitious, is naive and at a loss as to how to respond to the challenges of the 1848 revolution. He languishes as a spectator, unwilling and unable to participate in any way. His failure of will is pervasive. He wants to become a novelist, starting to write 'Sylvio, the Fisherman's Son, and A History of the Renaissance, but fails to complete them. He buys painting equipment but never uses it. Flaubert also takes aim and finds wanting in different respects at the other characters in the novel. Jacques Arnoux is Madame Arnoux's husband and a successful businessman, but his financial speculation leads to disaster and penury both for him and his wife.

Frederick does have relationships with a discarded mistress of her husband, Rosanette, who becomes pregnant with his child, but the child does not survive. Rosanette is depicted as a beautiful, seductive woman who captures Moreau's attention with charm and vivacity. However, their relationship is ultimately characterised by instability and betrayal.

Charles Dambreuse is a wealthy and influential aristocrat. He is portrayed as an older, politically connected man who becomes entangled in a financial scandal. Dambreuse plays a significant role in Moreau's life, introducing him to the world of politics and providing opportunities for social advancement. The economic downfall of Dambreuse is perhaps Flaubert's way of social critique, showing the inherent instability of financial speculation. Frederick seduces his wife, of whom Flaubert writes, 'She had a bloom about her in which there was no brilliancy, like that of preserved fruit'. Deslauriers, his social-climbing childhood friend, also fails to fulfil his ambitions, ending up as a minor functionary. His artist friend Pellerin has huge artistic ambitions but never finishes a single painting, his studio full of the detritus of pretentious, unfinished pieces.

It is a remarkable novel, quite depressing to read, and difficult to define. It has little to do with plot or plot development. His main characters are not heroes, as Hugo, Dumas, or Stendhal's novels have heroes. This novel is replete with anti-heroes who fail to achieve much in their lives during a great crisis in French society, the 1848 revolution.

For Flaubert, it is as if a whole class in French society has gone missing. It may sometimes be a dispiriting read, but it is a masterpiece. In the novel's last section, he travels and then returns to his home, and one afternoon, a woman visits him, his lost love, Marie Arnaux. She says: 'I have seen you again, I am so happy.' She has been obsessed with his memory, as he was with her. She sighed and after a long silence, said: 'No matter, we shall have truly loved each other' 'But not given ourselves to one another' 'Perhaps it is better that way' she said. 'No, no, what happiness we should have had'.

This last section is wonderful and full of irony, highlighting how two people became obsessed with their memories of who they were. She says, 'I should have liked to have made you happy', but Frederick could not find it in him to make his obsession real: 'he dreamed of the happiness of living with her, of ..passing his hands lingeringly over her head-bands or remaining kneeling on the floor, with both arms clasped around her waist, to drink in her soul with his eyes. But to do this, it would be necessary to overcome Fate; and so, incapable of action, cursing God, and accusing himself of being a coward, he kept moving restlessly within the confines of his passion, just as a prisoner keeps moving about in his dungeon."

Even when it looked as though Marie wanted to yield to her passions and give herself to him, Frederic is paralysed by fear and anxiety: 'Frederic felt something inexpressible, a terror, as though of committing incest...partly through prudence, and partly so as not to degrade his ideal he swung round on his heels and began to roll a cigarette. '

This novel has helped me reflect on how well I have fulfilled my own life, hopes and dreams. I remember all too well being crippled by anxiety and self-doubt in my early days of courting. I met my own Marie Arnaux in the bookshop on my first day at Reading University. She was a dream come true, a vision of perfect beauty. Her voice was mellifluous, with a slight Mona Lisa smile on her lips, and a voice pitched low. For me, beauty personified. Tragically for me, try as I might, I could never find the way to make her warm to me, to take me seriously as a lover; I suffered an agony of frustrated, anguished love throughout my whole first year at university. However, unlike Frederick, I took, for me, the momentous decision to abandon my dream of earthly delight. Early in my second year, I decided to be pragmatic, deal with the real world of dating, and go to dances and parties. Lo and behold, I found I was attracted to women who were attracted to me! I dated, had girlfriends and had the time of my life! I fell in love and, in due course, married. So, in this sense, I became most unlike Frederick Arnaux. I found a career in social work, which wasn't my preferred profession, but I made it work for me. I learned to become a successful pragmatist in the art of living.

More than that, I found true love and happiness.

It reminds me of T S Eliot in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock: 'There will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate. Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions and for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea. 'Do I dare disturb the Universe? In a minute, I have known them all already, known them all. I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.' Has my life become more than the stirring of coffee spoons? I certainly hope so!