Opening Passage:
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 answereed 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. (p. 1)
Summary: Frederick Moreau (Frédéric in the French) is a young man studying law, technically, although really he's one of many young men in the 1840s who have before them an endless array of choices and opportunities, with the result that they don't follow through on any choices and don't take adequate advantage of any opportunities. He meets up with his childhood friend Deslauriers, and through that connection is hoping to to get the assistance of a banker named Dambreuse in Paris. Nothing particularly comes of this, at least immediately, but it crosses his path with a shopkeepr, Arnoux, on whose wife Frederick has a crush. Frederick is able to get into Arnoux's good graces, which, of course, eventually makes it possible for him to be in contact with Madame Arnoux. Despite Frederick's efforts, Madame Arnoux will hold him off, but there's always something ambiguous about her doing so. One gets the impression that she very much likes the attention but just doesn't want to be an adulteress. Frederick, who is basically hanging around Paris and spending money, eventually has to go home, but the death of an uncle happens to put him in money again, so it's back to Paris. One of the Frederick's important characteristics is that he is good at looking wealthier than he is; his family is well off, but he repeatedly gives people the impression that he has more money at his disposal than he actually does. Given that the 'career' he ultimately chooses is effectively to live in debt while juggling mistresses, who are sometimes wealthy but always also in debt, and doing so by borrowing from friends and juggling those debts, it's a useful talent.
In some ways this is a very odd story, because there is not any story. The title is ironic; Frederick's 'sentimental education' is that he doesn't actually learn anything. He has no significant character arc, and he has no significant story. It's like reading an extraordinarily well written biography of the world's most uninteresting and most predictable man. It's not all boring, to be sure; a national revolution happens in Chapter XIV that accidentally makes Frederick's life somewhat interesting for a while. But (and this is certainly Flaubert's point) all the most interesting things happen entirely in the background. France is in a stage of unrest, and beyond happening to be at some student protests (it's something to do) and interacting with people who are involved with various factions of it (you sometimes need the social connections), Frederick's life has nothing to do with it. All of his friends have more interesting (although often more difficult) lives. All of his acquaintances are more committed to things than he is. He's essentially a cipher.
The result of this is a book that is very good in its episodes -- sometimes brilliant -- but whose only unity is that Frederick happens to be the same throughout the entire book. George Sand criticized the book for having no moral principle; the evils are not condemned. The author of the Introduction to my edition, Louise Bogan, characterizes this as 'obtuseness' and mere moralism, but in fact Sand is entirely right. Unhappy at how poorly the novel did, Flaubert spent plenty of time thinking about why, and he eventually came to the conclusion that people want 'falseness of perspective', that it 'ought to have a point' even though 'there's nothing of that sort in life' (p. vi). Yes, Gustave, when people read a story they expect it to have a point; brilliant discovery.
I would actually have more sympathy with his complaint except that Flaubert is trying to have his cake and eat it. He is not avoiding 'falseness of perspective'. It's the same thing one sees with Madame Bovary (who is, however, an actually interesting character); Flaubert's style generates not realism but hyperrealism. Everything is very, very vividly described, in detail and clarity of description of which one can easily say 'there's nothing of that sort in life'. It's like a fever dream in which one follows in extraordinarily rich detail what happens to a vapid airhead who just keeps doing the same thing. It's all 'falseness of perspective'. Moreover, it is clear that Flaubert is not actually neutral. He avoids condemning, but he can't always help being sarcastic. He does not like Frederick, and it sometimes shows. Bogan makes a big deal about the book being satirical, and it is. Flaubert is skewering what he sees as the wasted lives and pointless pursuits of young men in France in the mid-nineteenth century. But you can't actually make a satire work if the satire never condemns anything. Thus we get this book, a brilliantly written series of scenes that vaguely gestures at something satirical while refusing (like Frederick!) to commit to anything.
It should not be concluded that I did not like the book, although there were parts I had to push through. The way to approach it is to give up on treating it as a novel, except in the most general way; if you read it as a series of ironic literary sketches that share a common character, the scenes of a wasted and wasteful life, the book is quite enjoyable. Again, the scenes, the episodes, are ingeniously written. It's just that the book actively resists letting you make much of it as a whole. This is indeed an extraordinary presentation of Flaubert as a brilliant writer; but it is entirely understandable why the (perhaps) rougher Madame Bovary, not Sentimental Education, is Flaubert's brilliant novel.
Favorite Passage:
Ledru-Rollin's ex-commissioner began by describing the tortures to which he had been subjected. As he preached fraternit""Why did you not cally to the Conservatives, and respect for the laws to the Socialists, the former tried to shoot him, and the latter brought cords to hang him with. After June he had been brutally dismissed. he found himself involved in a charge of conspiracy -- that which was connected with the seizure of arms at Troyes. He had subsequently been released for want of evidence to sustain the charge. Then the acting committee had sent him to London, where his ears had been boxed during a banquet at which he and his colleagues were being entertained. On his return to Paris---
"Why did you not call here, then, to see me?"
"You were always out! Your porter had mysterious airs -- I did not know what to think; and then, I had no desire to reappear before you in the character of a defeated man."
He had knocked at the portals of Democracy, offering to serve it with his pen, with his tongue, with all his energies. He had been everywhere repelled. They had mistrusted him. He had sold his watch, his bookcase, and even his linen. (p. 306)
Recommendation: Recommended, but again you should go in willing to enjoy some nice literary episodes and descriptions rather than a story that goes somewhere; it deliberately doesn't go much of any place.
****
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education, Dover Publications (Mineola, NY: 2006).
