ABSTRACT
After the publication of Madame Bovary, Flaubert returned to an issue already addressed in his youth: his impossible love with a married woman, 11 years his senior, with whom he fell in love at the age of 14. The background of Sentimental Education is that of the revolutionary Paris (1848), in which reactionary, republican and socialist bourgeois are confronted in a bloody way. The revolution serves Flaubert as a backdrop to show his distrust of progress, of all political action, and of the behaviour of the masses. Sentimental Education is a faithful portrayal of French economics, politics and society during the revolutionary years.
