Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education possesses all of the above qualities and more: loaded title, financial expectations, a host of illusions to be lost, a knowledge of human folly that allows no appeal. The reader tracks the full story with sympathy and surprise but enjoys a kind of prudential advantage over the characters. Any novel of disenchantment and maturity must conjure up the very magic and youth that will, happily or with regret, be left behind. The interest of the titles is that they suggest that readers have already come of age yet are longing to go back in time to watch another person go through the process. When we stop making our favorite mistakes. When we become wise, or when we are defeated. We lost them, what did we expect? Perhaps we lost them because our expectations were so high.Īlmost all of these great novels address the question of how and when we grow up. We might think that the phrase great expectations, tinted with a slightly tired irony, is the perfect translation of lost illusions. In French as in English it suggests error or misperception, but more strongly and immediately the word evokes hopes and dreams-aspirations whose loss we cannot welcome.

And the meaning of the word illusion gave us pause. That’s what expectations are otherwise they would be done deals. We knew, for example, that expectations are great but rarely met. The novels themselves were not half as moralizing as their titles suggested - most of them were not moralizing at all-but they did seek collusion, appealing to what we thought we knew. These titles didn’t tell us much, but they hinted at risk and comeuppance, seemed to profess a large wisdom readers might share with the author at the expense of the characters.

There were dangerous liaisons, prides and prejudices, lost illusions, great expectations, crimes and punishments, and other moral or legal considerations.

Starting in the late eighteenth century, titles took a descriptive or even predictive turn. F or a long time French and English novels were content to borrow their titles from the names of their chief characters, and this is how readers first learned of Robinson, Moll, Pamela, Jacques, Tom, Humphry, Tristram, Émile, Evelina, Emma, Oliver, David, and many others.

Flaubert education