(Which in that era, meant forming useful relationships.) Frédéric is clever, and despite doing very little work he eventually gets through his law exams – but he doesn’t have the wherewithal to live in Paris and pursue his dream.įrustrated ambition makes him despair. At first Frédéric has no hope of forming a liaison with her because his mother’s fortune is encumbered and he has to make his own way in the world. Madame Arnaux is the wife of a wily art dealer and the mother of two children, Marthe and Eugene. He falls in love, that is, with an idea of love more so than the person, and this idealised woman-on-a-pedestal becomes an obsession.
The novel begins with Frédéric falling in love with a glimpse of Madame Arnaux.
Like Zola’s novels which document the state of the nation, Sentimental Education is also a very good exploration of the human heart.
So turbulent events form the background even though Frédéric is much more interested in himself and his messy love life. He comes of age in yet another French Revolutionary period, the novel spanning the years 1840-1851, and beginning as the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe began to crumble under the weight of discontent from both the left and the right. I suspect that most of us will be consulting the notes at the back of this edition more than is usual, and may sometimes have need of more of them…įirst published in 1869, Sentimental Education is the story of a narcissistic young man called Frédéric Moreau and his journey towards maturity. Flaubert could expect his readers to make sense of the novels historical context and to recognise the huge cast of historical figures but it’s harder for the modern reader. The detail of the novel is also mentioned in the ‘Historical Sketches’ that follow the novel in the new Oxford World’s Classics edition, where Patrick Coleman reminds us that Flaubert’s contemporary readers were enjoying the novel only twenty years after the events he describes. (p.167)ġ001 Books tells us that Flaubert was obsessed with the accuracy of every detail of social observation … the mythical master novelist devoted beyond comprehension. … surely one of the greatest novels yet written, possibly even the greatest triumph in literary realism ever accomplished. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), gets its place in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die because it is
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