A novel where Flaubert portrays his hero, Frédéric Moreau, against a broad social backdrop of Parisian life during the 1848 revolution and the first years after its defeat. Flaubert shows how an atmosphere of calculation, unscrupulousness, and immorality dulls the romantic dreamer, who tries—vainly—to stay pure and faithful in love and heroic in the political struggle.
Moreau tries to build a career, realize his natural abilities, he wants and knows how to love. But his chosen one is bound by marriage, and all of Frédéric’s attempts—writing, painting, law—remain only attempts…