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robertlashley's review against another edition
5.0
Like all great misanthropes, Gustave Flaubert was most effective when he takes it down a notch. There are more moments of syntactic beauty in chapters of Madame Bovary than in entire books of novelists of manners who claimed his influence ( talking to youuuuuuu, Louis Auchincloss). But like all witty motherfuckers angry at the world, I had to bow and duck away from his furious brilliance. His authorial hand veering between scorn for Emma's choices and the world that drove her to them is a bit too heavy and inorganic. And the literary form of the novel-the conduct book-is TOO FUCKING LOAAAADED to be nihilistically ambiguous about.
My case for A Sentimental Education is that the writer who wrote Madame Arnoux understood that the inhumanity of men was more of a problem than any "trashy novel" a woman would read. "Realism" is too blinkered a cage for Flaubert at his best here for two reasons. The first is that the tag lends too much to the conventions and biases of the time, which was why it was trashed so much. Education is a novel of ill manners among the french upper classes, centered around Frederick, a cad who fails upward during the time before and after the french revolution of 1848. His failures are tied into his image of Madame Arnoux as a sentimental ideal and not a grown-ass woman, so much so that when Madame wants a relationship, he recoils. The sentimental as an ideal being tantamount to the perfect being the enemy of the good is pervasive in the novel, as the theme of the privileged really not doing much of nothing as life is happening around them. This was the reason that the novel was trashed: especially by a young and dumb as fuck Henry James who was pissed off because of the class callouts and that there were no dead ladies getting their just desserts.
The second reason that realism is too blinkered a cage for Education is that you can see the influence of this novel on three of the biggest modernists in the history of the 20th century. In As I lay Dying, you can see Flaubert's exquisite imprint on his style and how the novel can be read as "a Sentimental education for poor white people blinkered by race." As well as her deconstructing the Bovary Archetype in There Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah's Gourd Vine wears Educations's influence in its tale of a corrupted holy man who thinks he can fail upward but can't.
However, the writer who Flaubert got the best out of was Ernest Hemingway. Mario Vargas Llosa says it better than anyone ( in Ernest's PBS documentary) when he defends The Sun Also Rises as a modernist tone poem that shows a world that surrounds and subtly indicts the hipster nihilism of its protagonists( a blueprint Flaubert started with Education). You can see it most tellingly in A Farewell To Arms, where Hemingway's cad of a Frederick goes to war, and its horrible sense of personal and psychological happenstance tests the holy hell out of him( and most devastatingly, in the end, his Catherine.)
What a magnificent asshole, That Gustave Flaubert
My case for A Sentimental Education is that the writer who wrote Madame Arnoux understood that the inhumanity of men was more of a problem than any "trashy novel" a woman would read. "Realism" is too blinkered a cage for Flaubert at his best here for two reasons. The first is that the tag lends too much to the conventions and biases of the time, which was why it was trashed so much. Education is a novel of ill manners among the french upper classes, centered around Frederick, a cad who fails upward during the time before and after the french revolution of 1848. His failures are tied into his image of Madame Arnoux as a sentimental ideal and not a grown-ass woman, so much so that when Madame wants a relationship, he recoils. The sentimental as an ideal being tantamount to the perfect being the enemy of the good is pervasive in the novel, as the theme of the privileged really not doing much of nothing as life is happening around them. This was the reason that the novel was trashed: especially by a young and dumb as fuck Henry James who was pissed off because of the class callouts and that there were no dead ladies getting their just desserts.
The second reason that realism is too blinkered a cage for Education is that you can see the influence of this novel on three of the biggest modernists in the history of the 20th century. In As I lay Dying, you can see Flaubert's exquisite imprint on his style and how the novel can be read as "a Sentimental education for poor white people blinkered by race." As well as her deconstructing the Bovary Archetype in There Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah's Gourd Vine wears Educations's influence in its tale of a corrupted holy man who thinks he can fail upward but can't.
However, the writer who Flaubert got the best out of was Ernest Hemingway. Mario Vargas Llosa says it better than anyone ( in Ernest's PBS documentary) when he defends The Sun Also Rises as a modernist tone poem that shows a world that surrounds and subtly indicts the hipster nihilism of its protagonists( a blueprint Flaubert started with Education). You can see it most tellingly in A Farewell To Arms, where Hemingway's cad of a Frederick goes to war, and its horrible sense of personal and psychological happenstance tests the holy hell out of him( and most devastatingly, in the end, his Catherine.)
What a magnificent asshole, That Gustave Flaubert
ichicysf's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
oddrid's review against another edition
3.0
This book pissed me off so bad! First of all, nineteenth century lit just isn't my scene (literature for me starts in the twentieth century, sorry). Secondly, the character is just such a fool that I can never get with it! First he's just innocently stupid, but as the book progresses he becomes a stupid asshole instead. Also, I think there may have been some problems in translating Flaubert, because I hear that he's beautiful to read in the French. My English translation was just very long and very dry. Such are the difficulties of being a comparative literature student.
So while yeah, I know it's a classic and I guess I can see why, I guess, that doesn't stop me from hating this book. Seriously, I threw it across the room when I finished.
So while yeah, I know it's a classic and I guess I can see why, I guess, that doesn't stop me from hating this book. Seriously, I threw it across the room when I finished.
henrikhofgen's review against another edition
4.0
Hevige Ulrich-vibes uit ‘De Man zonder eigenschappen.’ Niet direct mijn favoriete Flaubert, maar zeker grandioos.
_quinnsreads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Racism
phillipsfreed's review against another edition
1.0
Possibly the driest book I've ever read. I loved Madame Bovary, so was excited for this one but was very sorely disappointed.
The characters are so flat and difficult to connect to in any way, and Flaubert seemingly jumps from thought to thought which had me turning back pages to find out what was going on.
Very much agree with Henry James's assessment of this book!
The characters are so flat and difficult to connect to in any way, and Flaubert seemingly jumps from thought to thought which had me turning back pages to find out what was going on.
Very much agree with Henry James's assessment of this book!
throb_thomas's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
4.0
cindie's review against another edition
The plot is dragging a bit, the characters aren’t particularly endearing. I may give it another chance later on when I don’t have books out from the library.
deegee24's review against another edition
4.0
This is a bit of a letdown after Madame Bovary. Henry James called the book "elaborately and massively dreary," and there are definitely parts in the middle, repetitive satirical portraits of the leisure class, that are a hard slog. Nevertheless, there are also passages of stunning prose (judging from the English translation) and penetrating insights on the social upheavals of France in the years before and after the revolution of 1848. The main character, Frédéric Moreau, is an interesting example of an ambitious but aimless bourgeois who proclaims his undying love for a married woman but at the same time turns his attention to several other, more available women.