Obsessive Passion: A Structuring Motif in Flaubert’s Work

Abstract

Almost all of Gustave Flaubert’s characters are unformed when we meet them, but they begin to take shape very quickly. Almost immediately many of the central characters discover a passion and, following the scent of that passion, their lives develop, or more accurately, move forward, by a connection of the high points in the passions. In particular, in the novel Sentimental Education and the tale “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler”, the composition is worked out event by event as the protagonists strive for, reject, succeed, fail, build their hopes on, turn away from, have a final revelation of and a final rejection of the objects of their passions. Crucial events and crucial decisions can be chronologically linked to the demands of passion.