The Endless Search for Love
The actions of every character in Sentimental
Education are motivated by a search for love, a search
that seems as futile as it is necessary for survival and happiness.
Frédéric’s pursuit of Madame Arnoux is the main search that drives
the novel. Over a thirty-year period, Frédéric dreams of, yearns
for, and schemes to win the attentions of Madame Arnoux, propelled
mainly by his first image of her as a much younger woman on the
deck of a ship. Through financial struggle and success, through
political endeavors and forays into high society, through friendships
and affairs, the one constant is Madame Arnoux and her elusiveness
in Frédéric’s life. Occasional connections and mutual devotions
are far outnumbered by arguments, disappointments, and doubts. Ultimately,
the search for love proves more lively and important than the love
itself: when Madame Arnoux finally offers herself to Frédéric, he
dismisses the thought out of hand.
Other characters’ searches for love may be less dramatic,
but they serve as driving forces behind their actions. Rosanette,
despite her many lovers and her independent spirit, yearns to have
a child and be married. Madame Dambreuse, enmeshed as she is in
high society and influence, accepts Frédéric as a lover because
she wants him to provide her with a great passion. Deslauriers’s
search meanders from women to jobs to schooling; in a way, he seeks
some sort of passion. Pellerin’s search takes the form of a protracted
search for fulfilling art, while Hussonnet, Dussardier, and Senecal
pursue political endeavors with all the devotion they can muster.
Louise Roque seems to have the purest motives in her search for
love, yearning for Frédéric and settling for Deslauriers only when Frédéric
proves unavailable. However, even she is unfulfilled, and her search
continues: she leaves Deslauriers for a singer. In Sentimental
Education, the search itself—not its outcome—is what life
is truly made of.
The Elusive Purpose of Art
Throughout Sentimental Education, characters,
particularly Pellerin, continuously disagree and change their minds
about what the purpose of art really is. Pellerin initially believes
that beauty is the sole purpose of art. He rails against art that
has a “hideous reality,” claiming that art is meant to provide adulation
and opulence. Pellerin’s views don’t mesh with the views of other
characters; for example, Senecal claims that art should lift “the
moral standards of the masses” and that the idea of something matters
more than its style. Although Pellerin makes frequent, grand pronouncements about
what art is and should be, his views eventually change. He later
decides that character and variety are more important to art than
beauty. He at one point tries to commodify art by forming a stock
exchange on which artists would collaborate to produce “sublime
works of art.” This bizarre idea suggests that Pellerin is struggling
to keep the ideals of art alive, even while art is valued less and
less in society. Ultimately, he becomes a photographer, embracing
the “realism” he once dismissed and including himself in his photographs.
For Pellerin, art has become a vehicle for portraying reality on
the most personal level. The purpose, even for the artist himself,
has changed. Arnoux’s changing involvement in the art world follows
the same sort of path as Pellerin’s, although we are told of his
background only in brief. He is first an artist, then a seller of
art; then he abandons art altogether and opens a china factory. From
doer to seller to nothing at all, Arnoux changes his involvement
just as Pellerin does. Once a believer in beauty and “art for art’s
sake,” each man’s interest eventually turns utilitarian.
As French society lost its illusions, so too did the purpose
of art begin to seem less enchanted. The changes in Pellerin’s and
Arnoux’s views about and involvement with art follow the changing
social and political climates of the time. As capitalism and money
began to dominate society, people began to make their fortunes rather
than inherit them, and old ideas about beauty and art lost their
resonance among the new middle-class. Flaubert sought to condemn
the new bourgeoisie, who he believed were vacuous, and his depiction
of the desecration of art is one way that he comments on the declining
culture of the time.
The Emptiness of High Society
Although Frédéric aspires to become a member of Paris’s
high society, the company he hopes to join prove themselves to be
disloyal in their allegiances, unpredictable in their whims, and
shallow in their concerns, which creates an overall sense of how
inane this community is. Flaubert intended Sentimental Education to
paint a satirical picture of this privileged segment of the population,
a decision that led to anger and poor reviews when the book was
published. Examples of the capriciousness and vacuity of society
appear throughout the novel, but we see them most clearly in the
social gatherings at the Dambreuses’ house. There, talk rarely leaves
the realm of gossip and silliness, and even Frédéric—always willing
to indulge this society because of his yearning to be part of it—is
shocked and appalled. He describes the conversation as “aimless,
lifeless, and inconsequential,” yet still strives to become part
of it. Although these people seem banal to him, he still yearns
for their approval.
The flagrant infidelities and convoluted affairs add to
the argument that this society is foolish and comical. The romantic
liaisons change quickly and become almost impossible to follow.
Rosanette is kept by Oudry, then Arnoux; Frédéric somehow competes
with Delmar, but we’re never entirely sure what Delmar’s role is. Madame
Dambreuse competes with Cecile, her husband’s illegitimate daughter,
for Martinon, then takes Frédéric as her lover. Arnoux, Mademoiselle
Vatnaz, and others in their crowd have stories just as involved.
All the bed hopping, cheating, stealing, and lying create an unflattering
portrait of a society that believes itself to be superior to the
masses and of the highest decorum, decency, and class.
