My review of Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert
This is a book in which nothing happens, against a historical background in which many dramatic things happen. But in the end, both the main plot and the sub-plot end up in the same place: nothing is gained, and nothing changes.
I did not like this book. I approached it with almost zero knowledge about it, but I had a decent familiarity with the French history in which it's set. When I finished the book I felt like I had read someone's personal diary, and I wondered why Flaubert went to the trouble of writing it. But since so many people have praised the book in the past 150 years, I will give it a fair chance and try to figure out what its merits are.
This book is usually contrasted to Flaubert's other, more-famous book, Madame Bovary. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert takes the opportunity to illustrate the failings of provincial life in France at the time. In Sentimental Education he does the opposite: he illustrates the failings of city life in France.
This book is largely autobiographical, and Flaubert himself is only thinnly disguised in the main character of Frederic. Flaubert spent his youth in a historical lull between 2 great eras in French history: between the era of Napolean and the era of Louis-Napolean. The period between 1815 (Napolean's downfall) and 1851 (Louis-Napolean's Second Empire) was a period of looking back to past glory and looking forward to the hope of a new Revolution. It was a 40-year period of unease between 2 great eras of passion. This book describes a Middle Class during this time which created its own passions to pass the time.
Members of this Middle Class in Paris would obviously have recognized themselves when reading this book. They are portrayed as materialistic, self-centered, and mostly shallow. Frederic cares little for anyone other than himself, and he is consumned by his adulterous passion for a married woman who is unattainable. He cares little for the social forces going on around him in Paris, even during riots and shots fired in the streets, and he is apparently unconcerned about the death of his own child with one of his mistresses. His contemporaries, reading this book, would most likely have understood that he was portraying them in an unflattering light.
But there have been plenty of parodies written throughout history. Why is this one so highly praised?
One of the ironies of the Arts, broadly speaking, is that the Arts - Literature included - spends a lot of energy criticizing the very social class that it depends on for its financial support. Flaubert made fun of the very people who were most likely to buy his book. Was the praise from his peers in Paris an example of self-hatred by the French Middle Class of this period? They were praising a story in which they, themselves, were lampooned.
Perhaps. This is largely the case today: most "High Art" today criticizes the very patrons who spend most of the money displaying this same art in galleries and buying them in auctions. The rich are sometimes plagued with a vague sense of guilt, or feel the need to be persecuted. Perhaps Art is a secular form of penance.
I think that all Art is judged by 2 broad categories: Structure and Content. Any book or painting or piece of music is designed and structured according to an "architecture" that is unique to that medium. Literature's structure is made up of words and timelines. Music's structure is made up of sounds and scales. A painting's structure is made up of color and shapes. These are all examples of the structure of a piece of art, or its "architecture".
The content of any piece of art is the reason for creating the art. The content of literature is the story itself. The content of music is the emotions that the sounds are controlling. The content of a painting is the image itself that is portrayed. The structure is the container and the content is what is in the container.
Literature, especially modern literature, is often judged for its style - its structure - as its main criteria. Content is often secondary. This is similar to how poetry is judged. Poetry is pure words, and if the content of a poem doesn't make sense this doesn't need to detract from the beauty of the words. Novels are often judged like this. A book can be judged by its use of language and its plot mechanisms and its mood and other details that are independent of the plot. These are all valid criteria for critiquing a book, but they often ignore the content of the story itself.
This is especially true of how Film is often judged today. A film can contain a ridiculous story, an offensive story, or a story that makes no sense. But if the film is creatively produced, and if the plot has unexpected twists and turns, and if it's visually interesting, then the film is judged to be good. Literature is often judged the same way.
Film and literature are like boxes, and the story is what you put inside of the box. Just as little kids are often more interested in the box than what's inside the box, people today often care more of the structure of a film or a book than for the story it's telling. This isn't a bad thing, it's just how Art is judged in the modern world.
Perhaps this may be one difference between Art and Entertainment. Art encompases both the box and the content, but Entertainment focuses on the box...?
I suspect this is a large reason why Sentimental Education is admired by so many people. It's a nice box.
Regarding the use of language, I read this book in English, so it was removed from the original language. To truly judge the use of language I would have to read it in the original French.
Regarding how the story is told, it uses a main plot and a sub-plot in an upside-down fashion, which I thought was creative. Normally, the main plot would be the revolution of 1848 which occurs in this book, and the sub-plot would be the romantic pursuits. But this books reverses this structure, and pushes the major events back into a sub-plot, and makes the shallow romantic story into the major plot. It would be sort of like painting a portrait of a person where the clothing is painted in clear color but the face is painted in fuzzy black and white.
I think the character of Madame Arnoux is probably a symbol of the Socialist utopia that the revolutionaries of 1848 were trying to create. Both goals - the married woman and the perfect society - are unattainable and naive. Perfect Socialism, and a complete relationship with a married woman, are both illusions. So perhaps Flaubert was symbolizing the entire revolutionary movement in France at this time in the character of Frederic: they, and he, were passionate and zealous, but they were both ultimately naive. In the end, nothing changed, for Frederic and for France. After all the drama, Frederic was still alone and France was still a society in which power and wealth were distributed unequally across the social classes.
Fair enough. All of this is structure and architecture, and this is a legitimate aspect of art for judging quality. But the purpose of architecture is to support content. A building's architecture exists to support a livable space. The purpose of music's architecture is to give structure to sounds, to convey emotional impact. A painting's architecture of shape and color exists in order to portray an image in a visally coherent way. And a novel's architecture exists in order to tell a story. And this story should be worthy of the architecture used to tell it. The story should deserve the effort that went into the structure.
This is what I think is lacking in this book. It is skillfully put together, but I really didn't care about the story itself. I liked the various plot details, I liked the historical portrayals of this era, and I liked the images of Paris, but I found myself getting bored by the story itself and I looked forward to finishing the book.
Perhaps the book should be classified as a type of poetry. Poetry can get away with content that makes no sense, since the reader focuses on the use of language alone. But in a novel the content needs to live up to the architecture. It needs to "deserve" to be supported. I don't think this story deserved the book's architecture. It was sort of like an architect using Gothic Cathedral architecture to design a bus-stop.
Perhaps I'm too harsh, or I'm missing some deeper point, but that's my reaction to this book.