41 pages • 1 hour read
Gustave FlaubertA Simple Heart
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1877A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of Social Class
The disparity between social classes in 19th-century France is a key theme in A Simple Heart. Félicité is resoundingly working class and spends her life selling her labor to middle-class employers who seek to exploit her as much as possible. This relationship of class exploitation is written into the first line of the story, which reveals the envy of Madame Aubain’s middle-class friends that she should be able to employ such a competent maid servant for such a consistently low wage.
Félicité’s vulnerability to such exploitation demonstrates the relationship between class and agency. Though Madame Aubain is left with significant debts after the death of her husband, she can sell properties and other assets that support her and her family. Even at her lowest point, Madame Aubain owns two properties and employs a maid, whereas Félicité never has this kind of financial safety net. Similarly, Théodore can use his financial resources to avoid the military draft, an option that would not be available to working-class men. His wealth allows him to dictate the course of his life, while working-class characters such as Félicité are subject to the whims of others—a point his abandonment of her underscores. This disparity extends to the most basic of necessities. For example, a middle-class person can access health care and medicine that can save their lives. Virginie comes from a middle-class family, so she can convalesce by the seaside, whereas a working-class character such as Félicité dies alone in a bedroom she does not own.
That social class also shapes the way in which people are perceived further illustrates its sway over people’s lives. Félicité and other working-class people are presumed to be unintelligent and foolish. Madame Aubain, for example, routinely dismisses Félicité’s sincere feelings; she simply does not value working-class people and their emotions to the same degree as she values middle-class equivalents. When Félicité tries to offer support to Madame Aubain by sharing her concerns about Victor in a conversation about Virginie, Madame Aubain’s reaction implies that Victor’s life is not worth as much as her daughter’s. Similarly, Monsieur Bourais disparages Félicité when she reveals her lack of education. He mocks her for not knowing how to read a map, even though he knows that she is examining the map to quell her anxieties regarding Victor. Madame Aubain also treats Félicité’s family with contempt; after Félicité finds her long-lost sister, Madame Aubain insists that Félicité leave them because she suspects that they are exploiting Félicité in some way. The irony is that Madame Aubain has exploited Félicité for years, but she treats this middle-class exploitation as a matter of course rather than a moral failing as she does with Félicité’s working-class relatives.
Félicité herself has internalized this double standard. When Madame Aubain becomes sick, Félicité feels that the natural order has been inverted. She feels that she should die before her employer, as though she has offended class dynamics by outliving her employer. Similarly, she forgives or ignores the sins of middle-class figures like Paul while criticizing herself and other working-class people. Félicité never challenges or even questions the rigid social order that governs her existence. Instead, the story subtly illustrates and critiques the domineering effect that this social structure has over Félicité’s entire life.
The Value of a Personal Relationship With God
Throughout A Simple Heart, Félicité develops a personal understanding of her relationship with God. She is a poor maidservant who lives in a society that seeks to exploit her at every turn, and as a result, she turns to religion for comfort. Religion gives Félicité a reason to feel optimistic even as she experiences the constant grief of losing loved ones.
Félicité does not have an extensive religious education. The story references several social institutions that embody mainstream religious doctrine: Convents, churches, and other Christian institutions provide religious education and support to the young and old alike. Notably, however, Félicité only accesses these institutions indirectly. For instance, when Félicité is confined to her deathbed, her beloved Corpus Christi procession passes outside her window. Likewise, until she sees Virginie receive communion, she is unaware of the significance and meaning of the ritual. Watching Virginie receive communion, Félicité experiences a moment of transcendence. This vicarious experience of religion is undermined when Félicité receives communion for herself and fails to replicate the sensation. As such, Félicité begins to investigate her own understanding of religion. Since there is no priest to guide her and no one willing to afford an education to a poor, working-class maidservant, Félicité must assert agency over her faith. She develops a personal understanding of God’s existence and her relationship with the divine—one guided by her own experiences and beliefs.
Loulou is key to this process. The Christian art Félicité sees in churches often depicts the Holy Spirit as a dove. After she spends time with Loulou, Félicité develops her own interpretation of the symbolism of the Holy Spirit, choosing to view the Holy Spirit as a parrot instead. To Félicité, this makes obvious sense. She notes how Loulou can speak and how his colors distinguish him from other birds. Moreover, Loulou is one of the few creatures in the novel who show genuine affection toward Félicité. Unlike the humans who exploit Félicité, Loulou has no ulterior motive; their relationship embodies selfless, unconditional love on both sides, which is the deeper reason why she ascribes some aspect of divinity to the parrot. This reverence for the image of the parrot as the Holy Spirit in turn shapes Félicité’s understanding of God, to the point that she begins to pray to Loulou’s stuffed body as though it were a religious object. This is technically idolatrous, but Félicité is too old and settled in her ways to change. She loses her sight, her hearing, and everyone important in her life. The parrot (and the faith that the stuffed parrot represents) is the only positive thing Félicité has left in her life.
The priest ultimately tolerates Félicité’s relationship with a symbolic stuffed parrot, and his attitude is in some ways the story’s own. Given the cultural context of Christianity, her veneration of the parrot is so outlandish as to seem farcical—the fact that it brings her joy is merely a sign of her “ignorance.” However, the novella also frames Félicité as a better Christian than any other character in both sentiment and deed. She loves the world around her, she tends to the poor and the outcast, and she gives selflessly of herself. The form her devotion takes may seem strange, but the novella nevertheless suggests that there is something true about it.
The Omnipresence of Death
The story of Félicité’s life is punctuated by the deaths of those around her. Death plays such an important role that the narrative structure is built on a foundation of important deaths. The loss of Monsieur Aubain, for example, is the primary concern of Chapter 1, which describes the way in which this particular death creates a need that Félicité spends the rest of her life trying to fill. Further chapters reveal how her life is shaped by the loss of her parents, the deaths of Virginie and Victor, the death of Madame Aubain, the death of Loulou the parrot, and the death of Félicité herself. These deaths are painful and significant moments in Félicité’s life. Since she never has a family of her own and is not present for the births and early childhoods of either Madame Aubain’s children or Nastasie’s, there is little new life to temper these losses. Even Loulou the parrot arrives in Félicité’s life at an advanced age, giving her just enough time to become attached before the parrot dies. Grief—rather than optimism or joy—is thus the primary emotion in Félicité’s tragic life.
Félicité is most affected by the deaths of Victor and Virginie. These two losses are notable in that Félicité does not have the opportunity to say goodbye to the person she loves. She misses Victor’s ship as it sets sail, and as she and Madame Aubain rush to see the dying Virginie, Félicité jumps from the carriage to ensure that the gate is locked. That Félicité consistently arrives too late to say a meaningful farewell frames death as distant and unknowable. Félicité is stricken with a grief she cannot explain in any meaningful way. Virginie was an innocent young girl; the sight of her taking communion for the first time was a significant moment in Félicité’s life and the closest she ever felt to God. Meanwhile, Victor Félicité comes close to having a family only to lose him while he is sailing in a part of the world so far away that she cannot even comprehend the distance. These inexplicable losses are a key motivation in the development of her unique understanding of religion, which she turns to for comfort.
Félicité’s attempts to navigate death are also evident in the way in which she spends her final days. After the death of Madame Aubain, Félicité has little left in her life. She spends her old age in a crumbling house, constantly anxious about being told to leave and surrounded by the trinkets of her previous life, which she can no longer see for herself. The objects that she has accumulated over the years—including a lock of Virginie’s hair and Loulou the stuffed parrot—are reminders of what Félicité has lost, and these mementos of those who are no longer with her define her physical environment. However, these souvenirs also render death familiar rather than unknowable while allowing her to recall happier times in her life. When Félicité places Loulou on the altar in the courtyard, she unites this attempt to tame death through physical objects with her spiritual attempt to understand it. The final chapter suggests that these efforts succeed: While the story ends with Félicité herself dying, she does not meet death with bitterness or fear but rather with acceptance and even joy.
Related Titles
By Gustave Flaubert
