“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” –Gustave Flaubert
In my Internet perusal of things related to Monsieur Flaubert, I came across the above quotation. It is no doubt well-known among scholars, or certainly among scholars of Flaubert. For me, it sums up very well the characterization of the anti-hero of L’Éducation Sentimentale, Frédéric Moreau.
I spent probably the entire first half of the reading of this novel desperately waiting for Frédéric to exhibit at least a morsel of some redeeming quality. I thought to myself: “He will grow up, he will learn from his mistakes, he will take stock of what he has, cut his losses, move on, learn from his suffering, become a sympathetic character who, even if he continues to be a ”loser” in the eyes of society, will still become something of a success, even if it is in only in having a more mature outlook on life, in defending his beliefs, or in doing something entirely selfless in order to make someone else happy.” I waited in vain. And I foolishly became concerned about it. Because I am a hopeless romantic, and I wanted this guy to succeed somehow, somewhere, some way, however insignificant that way might be.
All week I have been thinking about that, and what I would write for my blog entry this week. The above quote, and also something brought out by Professor Pelletier, offered me a way of reconciling my natural instincts as a reader:
1. The Quote: Over and above the obvious cynicism of the remark, this quote encompasses Frédéric’s situation perfectly, although, it of course depends largely on our definition of happiness.
Clearly, at the end of the novel, no one could say that Frédéric was happy in the traditional sense of having a life that was fulfilling, in which he felt proud of his accomplishments and satisfied with the results of his labors. We must consider, therefore, the moment that he and Deslauriers chose to define as “the best time they ever had” which was a youthful faux pas in which they attempted to demonstrate their manhood by darkening the doors of a local brothel and ended up fleeing the scene, unable to literally consummate their adventure.
Why would they deem this to be such a good time, over and above anything else they had experienced in subsequent years? The key, I believe, lies in our interpretation of ”being stupid.” Flaubert, in his quote, perhaps meant it to be “ignorant” in every sense of the word, incapable of intelligent analysis, but if we interpret “stupid” as ”ingenuous” or “naive” it gives us a whole new perspective on the situation: Frédéric and Deslauriers may well have considered this the happiest time of their lives because their delight in the unknown, and their ignorance of the consequences represented a certain state of happiness (ignorance is bliss) to which they were never able to return. In the more cynical interpretation of Flaubert’s quote, their lives after that were marked by many “stupid” decisions which lacked the ingenuousness of that one particular event which they so cherished, decisions which were “stupid” in the more cognitive sense of being “ill-advised” and therefore did not have a happy end result in the sense of “innocence.”
2. Style: After listening to the lecture given by Professor Pelletier, a lot of things “coagulated” in my mind regarding Realism, Flaubert, etc. The one remark that helped me really appreciate and put into perspective L’Éducation Sentimentale as a literary work, however, was Dr. Pelletier’s comment that “Style is everything.” Consider this: Flaubert spent seven years writing this novel. SEVEN YEARS. He wasn’t just worried about the occasional turn of phrase, he wanted le mot juste for everything he expressed. That gave me a whole new perspective, or rather, a whole new place to take my appreciation of this novel.
The stately homes, the streets of Paris, the restaurants and taverns: Flaubert takes you there. His descriptions of people and places take on a whole new meaning… or lack of it. It matters not that any one character was a role model, that is not the point. The point is that we are transported to that time through prose that is sheer poetry. The characters are not “plot devices”… they are blank canvases upon which Flaubert paints scene after scene of what the people and places of this historical time suggested to him. Or at least that is the way I see it now.
I know this is treading dangerously close to the forbidden topic of “authorial intent” but that’s not really where I am going. In no way do I presume to comment on Flaubert’s intent in writing the novel. My point here is that if style was such an important consideration for Flaubert, then the interpretation of his text takes on a whole new dimension, and liberates the reader from looking for heroes, role models, and morals which were, precisely, probably never intended.
Flaubert states at one point in the novel that Frédéric “felt an urge to escape the world he was in, and to attach himself to something.” Apart from being very typical of Frédéric, who was a true chameleon, changing his mind with the whim of the moment, I believe that also represents a common thread throughout the story which may have been part of the mentality of the times: most of the characters were looking for an escape from the drudgery or pain of the situation they were involved in, and “attaching” themselves to another person or idea or political persuasion was their way of feeling that they were active participants in the drama that surrounded them, and gave them a sense of self-importance they may not otherwise have had. Whether these people were superficial or ineffectual is immaterial. What matters is the wide-angle camera lens that Flaubert uses to give us an appreciation of that historical period.
