For in the midst of the most intimate confidences, false shame, delicacy, or pity always impose a certain reticence. We come across precipices or morasses, in ourselves or in the other person, which bring us to a halt; in any case, we feel that we would not be understood; it is difficult to express anything at all with any degree of exactness, so that complete relationships are few and far between.
In every parting there comes a moment when the beloved is already no longer with us.
Although an actual affair—with the cumbersome weight of its immorality and impractical logistics—seems repulsive, an affair in literature is the height of what I might call ‘a good time’. Many of my favourite novels, such as Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Laughter in the Dark, and Another Country, hang affairs as the bloody crux of the plot, and create an atmosphere of drama and instability that is ineffably tantalising for prudes and gossips alike.
Sentimental Education, unlike Gustave Flaubert’s other masterpiece, revolves around an affair that never quite leaves the ground. Fréderic, a young man in mid-19th century France, becomes obsessively enamoured by the married Madame Arnoux, and the novel traces the next decade of their interactions as they dance in and out of each others’ lives. Affairs and arrangements abound in the novel—it is not titled an ‘education’ for no reason—but this particular relationship is never physically consummated. Instead, among the many emotions and topics that the narrative touches upon, there is an account of a man maturing and discovering new reasons why he might desire affairs, and why they proceed so dangerously. What I endeavour to do here is to parse out why affairs in literature are so compulsive and effective—and, maybe along the way, to convince readers to pick Flaubert.
One obvious reason might be that affairs offer a ridiculous excess for us witnessing it unfold. Implicit in these types of arrangements is an excess of partners—by the end of the novel, Fréderic is not engaged in one relationship, but three—but there is also an excess in the pleasure and indulgence that affairs breed. They are opulent, profligate; even if thought of in the most base of terms, that lustful sweat and mire pours out in surplus.
Flaubert is attuned to this type of excess. As Fréderic inherits money and moves to Paris, the reader discovers the sensually ferocious possibilities of the novel’s world. One of my favourite passages occurs early in the narrative, when the debaucherous yet endearing Jacques Arnoux (husband to the secret beloved) invites the still young protagonist to a party thrown by the courtesan and the latter’s eventual lover, Rosanette. As the night begins to degenerate into a bacchanal, the narrator lays out the scene:
Then [Rosanette] took a bottle of champagne which was standing on the stove and, lifting it high in the air, emptied it into the glasses which were held out to her. As the table was extremely wide, the guests, especially the women, leaned over towards her standing on tiptoe or on the bars of their chairs, so for a moment they formed a pyramid of headdresses, bare shoulders, outstretched arms, and leaning bodies; and long jets of wine spurted through the air, for the Pierrot and Arnoux, in opposite corners of the room, had each opened a bottle and were splashing the company’s faces. The door of the aviary had been let open, and the little birds invaded the room, fluttering in bewilderment around the chandelier, and beating their wings against the window-panes and the furniture some of them settled on the heads of the women, so that the latter appeared to be wearing great flowers in their hair.
This party is our introduction to one of the primary women in Fréderic’s sentimental life, and the scene culminates in his lustful appreciation of her charm. Flaubert’s prose revel in the lush extravagance of this hedonistic moment that is shared by everyone present, and it is not difficult to imagine how readers might be swept up in it. Innate to an affair is the selfishness in one’s own pursuit of pleasure and, in the same stroke, abandoning loyalty to another; and the readerly experience of bingeing on these types of plots matches that self-seeking heedlessness. We are turned into insatiable bystanders at a gaudy car crash.
However, perhaps it is unfair to ignore the positive emotions that also surge throughout an affair plot. In a scoliatically bare-bones way, affairs are love stories. They are passionate relationships often spurred on by feelings of dissatisfaction, alienation, or insecurity. As a reader, you are exposed to Macbeth-like depths of emotion painted within a Romeo and Juliet frame. Deep into the novel, when Madame Arnoux knows that they both love each other, she demands that Fréderic restrain his love, or he will not be allowed to stay there with her, and he responds:
‘Ah! I defy you to prevent me!’ replied Fréderic. ‘What is there for me to do in the world? Others strain after wealth, fame, power. I have no profession; you are my exclusive occupation, my entire fortune, the aim and centre of my life and thoughts. I can no more live without you than without the air of heaven. Can’t you feel my soul yearning for yours? Don’t you feel that they are destined to mingle, and that I am dying of impatience?’
Fréderic is set adrift within the liminal space of his youth, and latches on to his love as an anchor. His emotions are, perhaps, melodramatic, but they are also desperately fervent. Despite what we would like to believe about affairs, there are reasons why they arise—attachments that are beautiful and sincere in and of themselves, or marriages that are dysfunctional yet also inescapable. Other than an untimely death for Arnoux, an affair is the only path for a union between the two lovers, and it is difficult to truly not hope for their happiness, in spite of the ethical qualms that will accompany that end.
This charitable rendition of their situation is a more romantic view towards affairs, and one that Fréderic, as a romantic himself, would endorse. Flaubert, however, is always winking at the reader. Fréderic charges others of wandering after ‘wealth, fame, power’ while he is devoted to Madame Arnoux; but over the course of the novel, Fréderic also pursues these three gorgons, often at Madame Arnoux’s expense. The reader should also be tipped off by the exclamation of impatience at the end of his speech, which is lecherous desperation at best. Throughout the novel, Flaubert undercuts Fréderic’s idealism, revealing a capriciousness to passion that Fréderic does not quite catch in himself.
What I have charted out between these two thoughts on affairs in literature is the difference between a relationship that erupts in spectacle versus one that flowers from intimacy. I have placed them at two poles, and inadvertently assigned a moral quality to each. But what I suggest in closing is that what makes affairs in novels unnervingly compelling is that they are not binaries, but a mix of each extreme. They sit at the nexus of the private and the public—public dynamics are led wantonly into a private room, and private liaisons become public entertainment.
A major aspect of the novel that I have neglected is the way that Flaubert staggers the romantic drama with the political and historical unfolding of the 1848 revolution. He vividly recalls the sentiments and hostilities across classes and factions, and he mirrors these changing dynamics with that of the characters’ personal lives. Betrayals, secret meetings, and shifting beliefs within Fréderic’s romantic and social circle parallel those of the nation. In this way, the public invades the private, transforming affairs from tenderly lustful acts into ones of cunning and desperation.
Similarly, the private doors of the bedchamber become unlocked for all the world to take a look. Although these affairs intend to stay shrouded in shadows, many of the characters know who sleeps with who, or gossip about who they think sleeps with who. There might be misunderstandings, but there is a general knowledge floating around town. And we, as well, are arbiters of that gossip. The reader, by nature of their position as consumer of the story, turns the clandestine relationship into a peep show. We are privy to knowledge we should not possess, and our entertainment revolves around the passion yoked to this knowledge. We become intimate with a spectacle we should know better to ignore.
Maybe this is why, then, affairs in literature are so striking—they rattle our sensibilities. They provide an opportunity for a novel to challenge our empathy and discernment. Or, scratch that—these senses are not challenged, but aroused, unruly sleeping together in one bed. Under the spell of a craftsman like Flaubert, we are not ourselves. Our judgement becomes promiscuous.