The Opposite of Heroic

 

I picked up this book from an op shop in the Lake District mainly because Van Gogh had referenced it in one of his letters to his brother. He seemed to enjoy it tremendously. As did Ford Maddox Ford, who, according to the introduction, read it 14 times. 

It is littered with footnotes that you need to go to the back of the book to read, being set at the time of the 1848 revolution. But after a while, I stopped looking up what the references meant. I just couldn't be bothered. I wanted to get through this book as quickly as possible and forced myself to keep reading when I would have abandoned it and moved on to the next, and hopefully, more interesting book.

It was just like when I was doing my year with Dickens and had been going on swimmingly with all the titles until I came to Little Dorrit. I simply couldn't get through Little Dorrit so I spent more than one post telling everyone how I couldn't get through Little Dorrit.

Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind. Because Flaubert, as we all know, is a genius. I remember getting stuck into Madame Bovary and identifying so much with Emma (all I wanted to do with the various boyfriends I had at the time was cheat on them; I found them mundane and morbid and unexceptional) and killing all my friends by recounting the story in detail. It was all I could think about. I was obsessed.

But this was in the late 90s. I remember being so broke at the time that I was down to peanut butter sandwiches every day. I remember being extremely depressed. Also, I remember not being distracted by Netflix. I think the impact of Netflix on reading habits is not to be sneezed at. All I can think about now is what is going to happen next in my current C-drama, Find Yourself. Which is about an older woman and a younger, very handsome man. I watch it for the younger, very handsome man.

But the thing about A Sentimental Education is, there is no real likeable character. They're all flawed which, I guess, makes them more real. They're all selfish and self serving, except perhaps for the hero, Frédéric Moreau, and his grand passion, Madame Arnoux, whom he continues to love, right to the end of the novel, when her hair is white. At the point when he could presumably have consummated his lifelong passion, he finds himself unable to do so, because she has become old and he's afraid he will become disgusted. He prefers to lay his romance up in lavender and treasure it from afar.

This is a tale of human fragility, innocence and naiveté. You cringe at the mistakes Moreau makes - his besetting sin is his youth - and the money he lends out to unscrupulous people that will never be paid back. But there is a  quid pro quo here. He lends Arnoux money because he wants to maintain contact with Arnoux's wife. But she is virtuous, a paragon of middle class morality, and not to be had for the asking.

There is a slightly mocking tone to everything in the book. Even Madame Arnoux's chastity which she guards to the end despite her husband's crass unfaithfulness.

In some ways, Madame Arnoux is the antithesis of Madame Bovary. Unlike the latter, her husband was a bastard who not only had many mistresses, but who diverted income the family could ill afford to lose, to these mistresses on trinkets and folderols. 

If she sought comfort in the arms of a young man who was clearly besotted with her, a handsome rich young man who was willing to be her servant, nobody would have blinked. And at one point she found her resolve crumbling. But the day she would have surrendered is also the day her son took ill. She saw it as a judgment upon her and never dared to think of straying again. 

And then there is Frédéric's  best friend, Deslauriers, one of the least likeable characters in the book. And that is saying something. I guess he was always jealous of Moreau, and he resented how easy things were for him. Frédéric's path always seemed to be smoothed out as if by magic. He was left a fortune. He was loved by women.

The times swirled with politics but not a lot of sincerity. 

I was glad to see the last of the book but perhaps some time in the future, I will go back to it and reread it carefully and read all the end notes and figure out what was happening in the context of the times. I am sure there was a lot I missed in my mad rush to be done with it.