A Simple Heart, by Gustave Flaubert

I read a translation by Arthur McDowall included in the same volume titled Short Novels of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967) from which I’ve already read and written about: Death in Venice, Notes from Underground, The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Aspern Papers, and The Fox. Others in the collection that I read elsewhere and before I started this diary, are: Benito Cereno (Melville), The Dead (Joyce), and The Metamorphosis (Kafka). There’s one additional work still to read before I put this volume away, Ward No. 6 by Chekkov. Maybe I’ll get to that next.

Though included in a volume called Short Novels (Neider prefers to call them novellas in his introduction), A Simple Heart is only a longish short story, to my mind. Not only the length (30 pages in this edition) but also the narrow focus, which tells an entire life story, but it’s a circumscribed life and told in a telescoped fashion. Flaubert published A Simple Heart in 1877 with two other stories in a book titled Trois Contes (Three Tales). The language in McDowall’s translation is beautiful. Flaubert obsessed over his sentences and revised repeatedly to achieve the stylistic perfection he was known for, so I imagine the French is even better. The story’s charm is carried by the main character, a servant woman named Felicite, and in the details Flaubert observes as he relates her life.

Felicite is introduced as the servant of a widow named Madame Aubain. The opening is quickly followed by filling in Felicite’s earlier life. Her parents died and her sisters scattered when she was young. She was taken in to work for a farmer. She has a brief romance with a young man who betrays her by marrying a rich woman. The rest of her life she spends with the Madame in her small home in a small village. The Madame has two children at home. The Monsieur died shortly after they were born before Felicite arrives. Felicite cares for the children and comes to love them. She cries when the older, a boy named Paul, is sent away to school. She cries again when the younger, a girl named Virginie, is sent away to study at a convent. Lonely, Felicite asks Madame if her nephew might visit, which he does. Felicite comes to love him, too; Victor is his name. After a time Victor ships out on a boat and eventually Felicite hears the news that he has died overseas. Virginie dies at the convent. The Madame and Felicite share their grief. The surviving son has difficulty in life at first, then settles down and marries a girl from a well-to-do family, whom neither the Madame nor Felicite like. Felicite cleans the house, and cooks, and cares for the Madame. She is devout, attends Mass.

The only distinction in the story is when the household is given a present, a parrot, named Loulou. It’s an unruly creature that annoys everyone. Unaccountably, Felicite is taken by it and it becomes her pet. She has it for a few years until it dies. Madame suggests that if Felicite is so heartbroken at the loss she should have the parrot stuffed. So she does. When it comes back from the taxidermist, who has done a good job, Felicite installs the parrot on its faux branch in her room in the attic along with all the other momentos she has collected over the years of her simple life.

Madame Aubain dies. The disliked daughter-in-law appears to clear the house of most of the furniture and disappears again. Felicite stays on in the house, which she doesn’t own but fortunately is neither rented nor sold. She begins to associate her dead parrot with the Holy Spirit, who she sees pictured as a dove in a window at her church. She prays as much to it as she does to the objects of religious reverence in her room. She loses her hearing, and then her sight. She dies as the story ends, with a final vision of the heavens parting and a vision of her parrot greeting her.

Perhaps that seems like a lot of plot but it’s all told very straightforwardly and economically.

Flaubert was not prolific. He wrote three major novels: Madame Bovary, which I read ages ago; Salammbo. and A Sentimental Education; the Three Tales, which includes this story; and some other minor works and correspondence. He is known as a realist. His characters and stories are closely observed portraits of life, not thrilling adventures or grand affairs, but respectful of the interest in every life and revealing of how incidents that seem minor when observed from the outside carry emotional impact and meaning when experienced from the inside. His tone is neutral, almost dead-pan, like a silent camera recording a quiet scene. The effect is lovely, and more moving than you might imagine. Although the image of the heavens parting for a dying woman to reveal the image of her dead parrot might seem like a Terry Gilliam animation from a Monty Python episode, it evokes a sympathetic nod not a laugh, and a smile directed inwardly at our own humility.