Realism in Sentimental Education

 

 

Flaubert, as one of the exponents of realism, according to Rene Wellek in the article titled “Realism in Literature”, shows a mastery of describing contemporary life in France during the middle of the eighteenth century (Wellek 2).  This style of writing is characterized by giving a “truthful representation of the real world” and a study of “contemporary life and manners by observing meticulously and analyzing carefully” (Wellek 2). In describing contemporary life writing should “do so dispassionately, impersonally, objectively” according to Champfleury who lived during the same time as Flaubert and who wrote about the realistic style in essays titled Réalisme (Wellek 2). 

There are many examples of this style in Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and sometimes a truthful representation of the world is not very pretty. When Flaubert describes the conditions in the prison where 900 inmates, including his friend Sénécal, are being kept during the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, we can almost smell the stench coming from the jail:

There were nine hundred men there, packed together chaotically in the filth, black with powder and coagulated blood, shaking with fever and shouting with rage; and those who died were left among the living. (Flaubert 363)

 

As Henry James says in the Art of Fiction and other Essays, and quoted in the book titled Realism edited by Lilian R. Furst ”The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life” (43). We can assert that Flaubert is skilled at representing the life of his times in even the minutest detail.  After Moreau had thrown a plate at the viscount Cisy, Flaubert describes the scene down to the pieces of broken crockery: “. . . the waiters were mopping up the wine and picking up the broken crockery from the floor” (240).  When Moreau goes looking for his friend Regimbart to tell him about the incident, Flaubert describes the tavern where Regimbart is eating as “A candle on the edge of the bar lit up the deserted room. All the stools had been placed on the tables, with their legs in the air” (240-241).

As a result of Flaubert’s use of such a realistic style, we can actually feel like we are walking the streets of Paris and living at the same time as the story was written.  Such is the talent of a writer like Flaubert to transport us into the Paris of the 1840’s.