The invention of the life The relationships that effectively unite, in L'éducation sentimentale, Frédéric to all the other characters in the novel reproduce within the neutralized mode of an esthetic intention, the fundamental structure of Flaubert's relationship with the social universe. Working to invent a new manner of living : the bourgeois condition, which defines the modern artist and intellectual, while still sufficiently recognizing the axioms of the bourgeois style of life in order to make them manifest. Flaubert was led to feel strongly the question, today repressed, of the social determinants of the writer's career and of the position of the intellectual in the structure of the ruling class.