It describes Moreau's love for an older woman, a character based on the wife of the music publisher Maurice Schlesinger, who is portrayed in the book as Jacques Arnoux.

Considered one of the most influential novels of the 19th century, it was praised by contemporaries such as George Sand[1] and Émile Zola,[2] but criticised by Henry James.

Frédéric Moreau renews his acquaintance with a childhood friend, Deslauriers, who advises him to meet with Dambreuse, a rich Parisian banker.

In Paris, Frédéric stumbles across a shop belonging to M. Arnoux, whose wife he developed a fascination for when he met her briefly at the start of the novel.

A little more than a year after the start of the story, Frédéric is at a student protest and meets Hussonnet, who works at M. Arnoux's shop.

In an attempt to resolve the financial situation, Frédéric returns to Dambreuse, who this time offers him a position.

[citation needed] In the midst of the revolution, Frédéric's political writings win him the renewed respect of his friends and of M. Dambreuse.

Such was Flaubert's judgment of his times, and the continuing applicability of that cynicism goes a long way in explaining the novel's enduring appeal.

[citation needed] Early in the novel, Frédéric compares himself to several popular romantic protagonists of late 18th-century and early 19th-century literature: Young Werther (1774) by Goethe, René (1802) by Chateaubriand, Lara (1824) by Byron, Lélia (1833/1839) by George Sand and Frank of "La Coupe et les Lèvres" (1832) by Alfred de Musset.

Henry James, an early and passionate admirer of Flaubert, considered the book a large step down from its famous predecessor.

"Here the form and method are the same as in Madame Bovary; the studied skill, the science, the accumulation of material, are even more striking; but the book is in a single word a dead one.

Madame Bovary was spontaneous and sincere; but to read its successor is, to the finer sense, like masticating ashes and sawdust.

"[4] György Lukács in his 1971 Theory of the Novel found L'Education Sentimentale quintessentially modern in its handling of time as passing in the world and as perceived by the characters.

[5] In 2008, American literary critic James Wood dedicated two chapters of his book How Fiction Works to Flaubert's significance.

Flaubert established, for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible.