El Blog de Twanda

Although there are many threads woven into the fabric of the Sentimental Education (the political situation, social class, etc), Frederic’s obsession with Madame Arnoux is the frame upon which the rest of the tapestry of the story is built.  Looking at the big picture, it appears that Frederic falls short of being a courageous hero.  In his dealings with the other women, he is pretty much pond scum.  In his eyes, however, he sees himself as Mme. Arnoux’s champion.  When her husband cannot provide for her, Frederic steps in and pays off debts for her.  It is Frederic who consoles her when her husband is unfaithful to her.  Frederic even fights a duel for her honor.  He calls himself her “true husband.” 

Seeing that Frederic is so in love with her, why doesn’t he sleep with her at the end of the book?  Earlier in the book, this was definitely his intent when he rented the apartment for their rendevous, but when she comes to offer herself to him at long last, he holds back.  One explanation is that she is now old and unattractive to Frederic.  I was a bit miffed when he was dumbstruck at her white hair.  Perhaps this shock was due to the fact that the last time he had seen her, she was still relatively young and beautiful, and this was the picture of her that he carried in his mind.  I think that Frederic got over his surprise  because as he spoke to her as he was on his knees, he relived his feelings for her and what she looked like when he knew her. He was able, thus,  to look past her current appearance and to feel a “frenzied, rabid lust,” like he had never felt before.

If Mme. Arnoux’s appearance was not an obstacle, then why did Frederic let her leave?  I think that had he slept with her, she would have ceased to hold the place in Frederic’s heart to which he had assigned her.  He had placed her on a pedestal in his mind.  She was the epitome of beauty and goodness for him.  Although he felt desire for her at the end of the book, the author notes that Frederic constrained himself out of “fear of being disgusted later.”   Even though he felt he was her true husband, he was not her husband.  To cross that line would have destroyed the image of her he had created.  She would become to him as the other females he had been involved with.   I wonder, if Flaubert had had Arnoux die and Frederic had been able to marry Mme. Arnoux, would she have lived up to his impossible fantasy?  Would he have been happy for a time, only to have his ardor fade with the years?   Though the book is a Realist text, it seems to ironic that Frederic so idealizes Mme. Armoux.  He doesn’t really see her as she is until the end.

As for me, I kept hoping that Frederic would wake up and marry Louise.  He would have been rich (a must for him) and Louise really loved him.  He seemed to have a genuine affection for her, especially when she was a girl.   Realistically (no pun intended), this would have been the most practical choice for him.     

Whereas in the Wordsworth poem nature is the source of the sublime, love is the focal point for the sublime in Sab.  As Carlota contemplated him, Enrique became the ideal lover, the “sublime creation of her imagination.”   He only sought to be united with her into a “poetic ecstasy of love.”  While he was absent, she passed the time imagining the next time they would be together.  As they traveled to Cubitas, nature would be more beautiful because of his presence, his voice blending in with the whisper of teh trees and the babbling of the stream.  

Unfortunately for Carlota, Enrique is not the man who could love her in such a way as she imagined.  His motive was financial gain.  Sab, rather, was the ideal lover for Carlota, though she was oblivious to this fact.  He sought only to make her happy, and she was the source of his happiness as well.  Sab relates to Teresa an instance when he was overwhelmed by his great love for Carlota.  One night when Carlota came outside her window, Sab was ther and crept close to her.  She seemed to him ethereal and supernatural with a divine halo around her head.  Sab felt so transported into a “sublime ecstasy of divine and human love,” that he believed that both he and Carlota would die and ascend to God’s throne.  This scene reminds me of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet where Romeo compares Juliet to the sun.  Juliet dares to love a man who is unacceptable to her family, but Carlota does not recognize that the very love she seeks is right under her nose.  Sab is Carlota’s hero, the one who sacrifices himself for her by giving her the lottery, and  dies of a broken heart, a “sublime martyr,” unrecognized by his belived.  Upon reading Sab’s letter, Carlota finally gives Sab that which he sought- one of her tears.

In class, Dr. Sol mentioned that Candide’s adventures were his journey of maturity.  This maturation ties in with the Enlightenment emphasis on questioning everything and reasoning out what is true through observation.  At the beginning of the book, Candide believes all that he has been taught by Pangloss-namely that this is the best of all possible worlds.  It is only when Candide is exiled from the Baron’s castle that he begins to experience the real world and to make observations about what the world is really like.  He hangs on to what he has been taught even while seeing the evil that men do to each other in battle, but when he is whipped and sees Pangloss hanged, he begins to doubt, saying, “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?” In his travels he hears the stories of others who have suffered more than he has and he witnesses the mistreatment of man toward man. In Surinam Candide despairs of trusting in Pangloss’ teachings, maintaining that it is the, “madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.”   As he continues on his journey, Candide vacilates between embracing and discarding the optimism that he had learned from Pangloss.  When he is hopefull of reuniting with Cunegonde, he remarks that “all goes as well as possible,” but reverses his position when she is not in Venice, saying,” all is misery and illusion.”  When he reunites with Cunegonde, however, he is not happy.  Even Pangloss does not believe his own tenets, though he continues to champion them. 

Candide finds an answer to his question of happiness in life by observing the farmer who is content by cultivating his garden with his family.  Candide’s newfound belief is not something that he has been taught naively embraces, but a belif that he has arrived at through experience ad observation.  The answers to life’s big questions may not be answerable,  but one can find happiness through contributing to his society of friends and family by working together with them to accomplish a goal.   This combination of experience and seeking one’s own answers in life is a process which we all go through as we mature.  Our parents teach us what they believe is true, but to grow up, we must examine their beliefs to see if they are valid for our lives.  Sometimes this process results in embracing the very things our parents taught us, and sometimes we reject what they believe, as did Candide.  In either outcome, we end up with our own beliefs about life instead of borrowed beliefs that are unexamined.