Sentimental Education

Sentimental Education is a novel by Gustave Flaubert, first published in 1869. Set in France during the years surrounding the Revolution of 1848, it follows a generation whose romantic and political hopes repeatedly fail to become meaningful action.

Frédéric Moreau, a young provincial with money and vague ambitions, becomes captivated by Madame Arnoux, the married wife of an art dealer. His idealized love for her shapes his decisions even as he drifts among other relationships, possible careers, and competing social circles in Paris.

Frédéric imagines himself as an artist, intellectual, politician, and devoted lover, but desire rarely develops into commitment. Around him, friends and acquaintances turn revolution, art, business, and romance into opportunities for status or self-deception.

Flaubert places this private indecision against demonstrations, barricades, and the changing regimes of nineteenth-century France. The contrast produces a sharp portrait of idealism weakened by vanity, passivity, and compromise.

Unsparing but often darkly comic, Sentimental Education is less a conventional love story than an examination of wasted possibility. Its precise observation of ambition and disappointment makes Frédéric's education a social as well as a personal one.

The downloadable files on this page contain Volume I of the illustrated M. Walter Dunne edition published in 1904.