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67 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Of special value, September 20, 2004
There is a special value in "Sentimental Education" that puts it among the highest class of novels. Better than Thackery, better than Stendhal, better than Austen, better than Balzac, better than Eliot, it offers something that Dickens or Melville, for all their virtues, do not provide. Here is a portrayal of a society, where the author looks deeply and thoroughly--and does not flinch. The contrast with Thackeray, whose sarcasms and coldness cannot hide a fundamentally conventional mind, is obvious. But there is also not the self-satisfied amusement with its own proprieties that we see in Austen, or the something for everyone that we see in Trollope, or the sentimentality so obvious in Dickens, or the way the captain goes on and on in "Billy Budd" saying he has no choice but to execute the fundamentally innocent Billy, or the fundamentally abstract obsession with unity that we see in Eliot. Here we see a story of a venial, petty monarchy, the hopes and illusions of the second republic, and its suppression and replacement by a new Napoleonic regime. If many of the friends of Frederic Moreau are shallow and complacent in their "democratic" phase, that does not alter their fact that their opportunism and moral corruption is a gruesome business. It does not remove the shock on reading the death of the one truly decent person in the book, murdered by a dead ringer for David Horowitz.
This is not a popular book in the English speaking world. Frederic Moreau does not have the dignity and moral weight that a moralistic criticism demands. Much of his time is spent wondering how to seduce Madame Arnoux or how he should snag "The General." Of course, French 19th century fiction is distinguished from its Victorian counterpart by a greater degree of sexual realism. But the point of the book is not to discuss Moreau's apparently aimless life. Instead the point is how there are alternatives that would give his life meaning, whether it be love, artistic creation, professional achievement, politics and a genuine interest in civil society. Moreau fails to achieve some of these because he does not have the energy to get them, he fails to achieve others because he runs out of time, he fails others because he is betrayed by people he trusts, and he fails others because otherwhelming forces remove options from the tables. Moreau does not fail simply because he is weak, he fails for reasons that most people fail. And in that sense Flaubert shows an exemplary realism.
And of course, Flaubert is the master stylist. Who can forget his description of the wealthy opportunist Dambeuse "worshipping Authority so fevrently he would have paid for the privilege of selling himself." There is the perfectly controlled realism: we do not have the cheap tricks and garish effects of middlebrow writers. But we still have the poetic and the imaginiative: "the smoke of a railway engine stretched out in a horizontal line, like a gigantic ostrich feather who tip kept blowing away," "The women wore brightly coloured dresses with long waists, and, sitting on the tiered seats in the stands, they looked like great banks of flowers, flecked with black here and there by the dark clothes of the men." "the warm breeze from the plains brought whiffs of lavender together with the smell of tar from a boat behind the lock." Moreau's passion for Madame Arnoux may be weak, but it is more real and more convincing than all but a handful of romances in 19th century fiction. The political scenes present a picture that has almost no equals: a left chattering fashionable platitudes, but with a leaven of genuine indignation, a right who covers itself in hypocrisy and lies until it can find the moment to strike. And of course there is the ending, a discussion of nostalgia and lost hopes that many English critics find sordid, but is one of the most heartbreaking in all fiction.
There is a complaint among people who should know better, like Peter Gay and James Wood, that Flaubert shows a certain unnecessary bitterness. This shows a certain ignorance of history. After all Flaubert wrote one of the great novels in world literature and instead of being praised by his own government he was put on trial for obscenity. His contempt did not come lightly. One could contrast it with Naipaul's, whose solution to the mediocrities of Trinidad was to move to a very different country and to be generously praised, by some for his art, and by others for appeasing conservative consciences. Certainly Naipaul's path is not an alternative available to most of his countrymen. Nor was Flaubert's distaste for contemporary life simply the result of the particular nastiness only confined to French politics. There were things equally vile or worse in Trollope's Ireland or in the end of Reconstruction of Henry James. That they did not perceive the same kind of foulness surely is a mark on the limits of their imagination, and a point in Flaubert's favor. Sentimentality is often described as unearned emotion. But in Sentimental Education, every emotion is well deserved.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterpiece, April 22, 1998
By A Customer
"The Sentimental Education" is an absolutely brilliant novel. That Flaubert's most famous and most highly regarded novel is "Madame Bovary" is astounding to me. That novel has many failings, whereas "Education" has none. The writing is the best you'll ever read, the story is touching and deep and rich, the charcters wonderfully drawn. And the last paragraph in the novel is both hilarious and endearing, and makes it a novel that is brilliant to the very last word. I can not recommend this novel highly enough. It is somewhat of an overlooked masterpiece (overshadowed by the lesser "Bovary"). One critic said that the reason "Forrest Gump" (the movie version) did so well was that "it dealt wonderfully with unrequited love, something we can all relate to." Well, "Education" is about unrequited love, and it deals with it with 100 times the power that "Forrest Gump" did. The novel also includes a revolution and the Parisian social world. "THE SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION" HAS EVERYTHING!!! When Woody Allen listed the "things that make me happy to live," one of the things he listed was "`The Sentimental Education' by Gustave Flaubert."
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art for Art's Sake Indeed, July 9, 2004
Smoke billows from a Seine river steamship, flags flap in a spring breeze, a young man catches a glimpse of the woman that will serve as a life long romantic love. These images float across the opening pages of "Sentimental Education," Gustave Flaubert's portrait of mid-19th century Paris society.I'd read this book in college and when I recently slogged through the horrific "Da Vinci Code" I decided to reward myself by re-reading "Sentimental Education," a novel that evokes the spirit of an age, etches a portrait of a culture and delves into the heart of human fraility and grandeur. Twenty years ago I was intoxicated by this book, believing it to be the perfect novel, populated with distinct and realistic characters but now I feel that the characters are the weakest aspect of the book. There is something sour, cheap and small about all of them that makes them seem more alike than different. Flaubert was adept at catching the nuances of character flaws but failed to recognize that people can also have great heart, courage and self-awareness But the set pieces are stunning, unmatched by anything else I've ever read.
Standouts are the all-night costume party of at Rosanette's with the glorious descriptions of the interiors, costumes and the personalities, Flaubert's take on the historic June 1848 with every sordid, petty, chaotic detail preserved and Monsieur Dambreuse's funeral complete with detailed descriptions of purchasing tombstones and the look and feel of a mid-19th century cemetery. Flaubert published "Sentimental Education" in 1869 after tinkering with the novel for more than twenty years. Like the impressionist art movement that arose at about the same time, the book remains fresh and alive because Flaubert focuses on capturing the details of the world around him that make it come to life in a richness of sight, sound, smell and feel that I don't think will ever be equalled.
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