Discontent

In The Sentimental Education, Flaubert just wanted to show the idleness and the existential conflicts of the middle classes of his contemporaries and maybe of himself, but this phenomenon extends far beyond his own XIX century French society. Frederic and the other characters in Flaubert's novel remind me strongly of the contemporary provincial Mexican middle class, who similarly criticize their society's values while continuing to participate in them -- passively depending on their parents and any available external resources without real ambition and initiative. I don't want only to reduce this naive "behaviour" or way of life only to the Mexican society. I feel that the attitudes common to these and other groups originate in their Western cultural heritage, which by its aggressiveness has become a sort of ideal with which most members of Western-dominated societies self-identify. This behaviour is reflected in the contemporary consumer mentality: constantly buying things not to meet real needs but in order to be accepted within a given social nucleus.

After Flaubert wrote this book showing the reality of their own class in France, the same phenomenon was occurring in the U.S. and other countries thanks to the Industrial Revolution. To a certain extent, this novel shows the reality of the middle classes of the XXI century: there is a parallel between the Industrial Revolution and globalization, because both of these events allow people to have access to new and different things. The power of acquisition grants these classes access to material things whether they are useful or not. Opportunist and ambitious, Frederic uses his relatives' money in precisely this way, to advance his social status through material acquisitions. The novel places Frederic's sentimental education in the context of important historical events which directly affect him, even if he isn't interested or influenced or aware of the social circumstances that he is living. Flaubert also depicts the discontent of Frederic and his contemporaries, that even once they "arrived" in the bourgeoisie, they still had the same problems, and in effect nothing changed, just as the revolution of 1848 did not change the situation of the French working and middle classes.