Flaubert: Revue Critique et Génétique (Sep 2010)
L’illusion de la désillusion : Essai d’interprétation génétique de L’Éducation sentimentale
Abstract
“Excuse my tardiness”. With these words spoken sixteen years later Madame Arnoux justifies her unexpected visit in the penultimate chapter of the Éducation sentimentale. We will try to show with a Genetics approach that Flaubert stamped on this last meeting a deep ambiguity, irreducible to the failed love theme. In the draft Madame Arnoux’s initial sentence was: “I came to pay back 15 thousand francs”. Let us not forget that in the novel’s second part the Arnoux couple borrowed this sum from the young man who had become rich thanks to an uncle’s legacy. These words are replaced by an expression of gratitude (“I came to thank you for an old favor”), in turn switched for the apology “Excuse us”, implying the husband’s presence, a formulation finally discarded in favor of the definitive expression. The small embroidered purse that Madame Arnoux places on the chimney as she enters turns out to be a type of compromise which obliquely evokes the money problem by mixing financial worries and feelings. In fact Flaubert suppressed all questioning of Frédéric concerning Madame Arnoux’s motive. From this suppression derives Frédéric’s forgetfulness about money problems which induces him to interpret her excuses and this small purse as a confession of her love and a sentimental gift. The last meeting between them thus becomes a dialogue of the deaf, drama of a fine misunderstanding. Flaubertian writing gradually evolves between the love story and the money story that are inextricably linked. The confrontation of the text with its “avant-texte” reveals the different effects produced.
