Gustave Flaubert's novel Sentimental Education

Gustave Flaubert, in his novel Sentimental Education, portrays his cynical view of the human condition by emphasizing deceit, vengeance and obsession in the relationships between Frederic Moreau and Madame Arnoux and Rosanette. Deceit, vengeance and obsession are shown by Flaubert to be interworking parts of the machinery whereby human beings destroy their own and one another's most precious sensibilities by putting their own self-centered desires above every other consideration, including the suffering of the ones they claim to "love".

The three defects of character can be seen as equally toxic choices which Moreau and the two women select from a banquet of possible poisons. In this case, one man's poison is another man's (or woman's) poison as well. The connections among the three nouns are based on the fact that obession is based on deceit, and especially self-deceit, about the flawed nature of the object of obsession and about one's own mitivations, and that vengeance is the inevitable response of an obsessed person once the object of the obsession either reveals his or her flaws or denies the obsessed person's desires.

Again, the author's sophisticated cynicism is the glue which holds these dysfunctional characters together in their mutually destructive pursuits. These three bourgeois characters, Moreau and the two women, seek their selfish ends, believing they are pursuing that which will make them feel most alive, when in fact their pursuits leave them completely

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espect to her husband's ever changing his deceitful ways. If Moreau were to see her in the light of reality he would see her not as a woman of high ideals but as a weak woman who allows herself to be abused by a brute of a husband. But he clings to his ideal image of her and therefore denies himself any genuine love he might feel for her if he could see her as the real woman she is or at least could become when she liberates herself from her husband and her abysmal image of herself. Moreau is just as deceitful, pretending to befriend both Madame Arnoux and her husband when everything he does and says is designed to steal Madame Arnoux from her philandering, wretched husband in order to satisfy the lust he mistakes for love. Moreau shows no inclination to get to know Madame Arnoux as a human being---the essence of friendship---but instead plans and plots, lies and manipulates to maneuver her into a sexual relationship. Watching her torn with suffering over her husband's infidelities, Moreau shows only lust and no compassion: Never before had she appeared so fascinating to him, so profoundly beautiful. Now and then a deep breath lifted her breasts; her staring eyes seemed dilated by an inner vision. . . . Occasionally she presse

Category: Literature - G