Flaubert's First Novel: A Study of the 1845 'Éducation sentimentale' (review)

Sadly, this is the final book by the late Alan Raitt, former General Editor of French Studies and founding editor of the series in which the present volume appears. As its subtitle makes clear, Flaubert's First Novel is a study of the 1845 Éducation sentimentale, Flaubert's problematic first full-scale novel (which he never sought to publish). With its composition interrupted by Flaubert's illness and completed after his family had conceded that he would never be able to enter the legal profession, the novel is seen by Raitt as a pivotal work that can tell us much about Flaubert's personal and artistic development. Intrigued by the lack of consistency between the mocking presentation of Jules for most of the novel and his apotheosis in the final chapter as a 'grave et grand artiste', Raitt speculates about how and why this unexpected shift in perspective came about. He approaches the text gradually and obliquely, discussing Flaubert's earlier writing at some length and devoting much time to piecing together fragmentary clues as to the nature of his relationship with Élisa Schlesinger. (It seems she was probably his mistress, briefly and disappointingly, in the early 1840s.) But as the argument slowly unfolds, these apparent digressions fall into place as essential underpinning to the book's central hypothesis. Raitt's careful detective work leads him to conclude that Flaubert originally intended L'Éducation to end with Jules sinking into bureaucratic mediocrity, as the author feared he himself would do. Jules and Henry are seen as projections of different aspects of Flaubert's ideas and experience, and their ironic representation as a form of bitter self-mockery. With the novel already at an advanced stage, Flaubert suddenly found himself freed by his illness to devote his life to literature, and Raitt suggests that this triggered a creative surge that emerges in the long final chapter where Jules becomes the mouthpiece for a new aesthetic. Rather than rewrite all that had gone before, argues Raitt, Flaubert introduced the deliberately obscure episode of the sinister dog to resolve the awkward disjunction by indicating a decisive but unspecified turning point in Jules's life. While Raitt does not seek to smooth over the novel's flaws, acknowledging that 'the young Flaubert is still learning his craft and [. . .] is far from having assimilated all the lessons attributed to Jules in the last chapter' (p. 100), he shows that the novel's contemporary setting, credible characters, and relative 'realism' were all valuable preparation for Flaubert's mature fiction. Written with exemplary clarity, Flaubert's First Novel is also valuable as a comprehensive account of other critics' views of the work. Many are quoted extensively as Raitt generously acknowledges their contribution to his speculative reading of L'Éducation, and while he is modest in stating his tentative conclusions, he is surely right to foresee that his own book will reinvigorate discussion of Flaubert's first novel: 'I am only too well aware that some if not all of my conclusions may be challenged by other commentators, but I hope that they will prove to be established on a sufficiently plausible basis to provoke debate' (p. 119).