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- Félicité Barette The protagonist of “A Simple Heart,” a poor housemaid living in 19th century France. Félicité is a highly moral, hard-working, and virtuous woman.
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Sep 11, 2019 · Félicité Tomlinson, sister of One Direction's Louis, suffered with PTSD and spiralled into drug abuse following the death of her beloved mum.
- Lucy Needham
Sep 25, 2019 · Louis Tomlinson has opened up about the loss of his younger sister Félicité. One Direction star Louis Tomlinson ’s 18-year-old sister tragically died in March this year following an accidental...
Mar 18, 2019 · Felicite, the sister of One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson, was an aspiring fashion designer who had 1.3 million followers on Instagram.
Félicité, an orphan reared haphazardly as a barnyard laborer, exposed to want and abuse, is without personal attractions or affections. She is courted briefly by a brusque young farmer...
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
Much has been made of the relationship between Flaubert’s life and his depiction of the servant in “A Simple Heart.” There are several notable parallels. During the time Flaubert was writing the story, he suffered some of the greatest loss and depression of his life. His friend and fellow writer George Sand, for whom he undertook the story, died be...
Part I
“A Simple Heart” opens with a description of “Madame Aubain’s servant Félicité as having been “the envy of the ladies of Pont-l’Évêque for half a century.” As cook and general servant she does all the work of the household for a mere four pounds a year while remaining “faithful to her mistress, unamiable as the latter was.” Madame Aubain has been left a widow with many debts and two small children, but after selling most of her property she manages to make do. The family lives in a musty old...
Part II
Orphaned early, as a girl Félicité works on one farm as a cowherd, then on another as a dairymaid. When she is eighteen, she attends a dance in a nearby town where she is dazzled by the light and the noise. There she meets a young man, Theodore, who offers to walk her home, roughly tries to have sex with her, and leaves when she begins to protest. Later she encounters Theodore again and begins a romance involving his passionate overtures and her consistent refusals; out of frustration or simp...
Part III
Accompanying Virginie to her catechism lessons, Félicité—who had had no religious education as a child—becomes profoundly caught up in the ritual and the emotional quality of Catholic observances. When Virginie makes her first communion, Félicité is as excited and nervous as if she herself were the communicant. Soon Virginie is sent off to a convent school, and Félicité mourns her absence deeply. To distract herself from her grief she asks and receives permission to have Sunday visits from he...
Madame Aubain
Madame Aubain employs Félicité in her service for half a century. At the beginning of Félicité’s employment Madame is the mother of Paul, seven, and Virginie, four, and the widow of a man who has left her with many debts. Although Madame Aubain rarely displays affection or appreciation for her servant, Félicité is deeply devoted to her and in many ways protects her. It is Félicité who bargains with tradespeople, who eases obnoxious visitors out of the house, who saves the family from an angry...
Félicité
Félicité is Madame Aubain’s faithful servant and the central character of the story. She is a woman of simple mind and simple heart, a believer in the supernatural, clean living, and hard work. Orphaned early in her life, she is a cow-herder and dairy girl until a broken heart compels her to leave and seek work in a nearby town, Pont-l’Évêque. Thus, at eighteen, she is hired by Madame Aubain as a cook and housemaid. She soon takes over the running of the household while forming a succession o...
Loulou
Loulou the parrot is the final love of Félicité’s life. He originally belongs to the wife of a government official whose family pays social calls on Madame Aubain. Because the bird comes from America, he reminds Félicité of her nephew, Victor, who died in Cuba. When the official is transferred to another district, the wife gives the parrot to Madame Aubain, but his habits so annoy her that she turns him over to Félicité. Félicité becomes very attached to him. When he goes missing one day Féli...
God and Organized Religion
As in many of his earlier works, in “A Simple Heart” Flaubert dealt with notions of simplicity, sainthood, religious faith, and duty. Many critics have interpreted this story as a profound but veiled critique of organized religion—particularly the Roman Catholic church in nineteenth-century France—and of its unquestioning following among the bourgeoisie, or middle class. As a realist writer, Flaubert believed the artist must not express his opinions in his works. The story’s reputed critique...
Topics for Further Study
1. Gustave Flaubert has been called the master of “Art for Art’s Sake.” Research the literary school of realism and the idea of “art for art’s sake” and discuss “A Simple Heart” in those terms. You might choose to draw parallels to realism in the visual arts and sciences. 2. Flaubert, it is said, was attempting to write realistically, to report what he saw, and to write with the beautiful precision of the language of science. Discuss how a writer of literature can be said to resemble, in styl...
Duty and Responsibility
A not-unrelated theme is that of duty and responsibility. In her simplicity, which makes possible her tremendous capacity to love, Félicité never questions her duty or her responsibility. Her determination in this respect is dogged, whether or not it is admirable. She works relentlessly for half a century for a ridiculously low wage, without complaint. When she rescues the family from the raging bull, she endangers her own life without a second thought. When she walks through the night to bid...
Point of View
Critic Victor Brombert has said that Flaubert’s great accomplishment in “A Simple Heart” was that he presented a protagonist, or central character, who is completely inarticulate and uneducated, and yet he made the reader view things as she does. The author allowed the reader to view Félicité’s character from both the outside and the inside: from the outside, through the omniscient narrator’s impassive and factual account of events and of the attitudes of other characters towards her; from th...
Irony
Irony is a use of language in which the intended meaning appears to be different from what is directly stated. The narrative voice in “A Simple Heart,” for instance, may be seen as ironic because although it offers no direct commentary on the story, the evidence it reports builds sympathy for the main character and exposes the shallowness and egoism of those who exploit her. The more subtle the irony, the more difficult it may be to determine exactly what is meant. Critics disagree about the...
Symbolism
Loulou is the most obvious symbol in the story, although there are many more. As a parrot, he can only repeat empty phrases, generally out of context, and thus he is a particularly ironic symbol as the vehicle through which Félicité should experience divinity. Félicité’s deafness in her old age is symbolic of her inability to comprehend or interpret the world around her. Many of the names in the story also appear to have symbolic significance, often with ironic overtones. Félicité (whose name...
Unlike the other two tales which make up the collection Three Tales, “A Simple Heart” is not a historical reconstruction. It is a story set in the time and the country of the author, and thus it reflects the attitudes and habits of France in the nineteenth century. Félicité represents a realistic picture of a woman living in the France that Flauber...
Although Three Tales (Trois Contes), the collection which includes “A Simple Heart,” was written more quickly than any of Flaubert’s other known works, it is generally considered most exemplary of his mature style. Flaubert began writing the piece in 1875, attempting a more gentle and humanitarian literature, and he completed the three tales in 187...
Jacqueline Ferret
Perret teaches English at Lake Forest College, in Lake Forest, Illinois. In the following essay, she examines “A Simple Heart” in terms of its portrayal of what was expected from a woman of the lower class in nineteenth-century France. When Gustave Flaubert wrote to Madame Roger des Genettes that his aim in “A Simple Heart” was “to move, to bring tears to the eyes of the tenderhearted,” he was explaining his intention to create in Félicité a sympathetic character—a central persona with whom w...
What Do I Read Next?
1. The Awakening is author Kate Chopin’s turn-of-the-century masterpiece. Often compared to Madame Bovary,this short novel tackles some of the same issues that appear in Flaubert’s work. 2. Candide(1759), by the French author Voltaire, is an earlier example of a work in which the experiences and perceptions of a naive character are used to produce an ironic commentary on society. 3. Winston Groom’s 1986 novel Forrest Gump also uses the life of a naive and good-hearted protagonist to comment o...
Robert T. Denommé
In the following excerpt, Denommé argues that Flaubert’s style in “A Simple Heart” leads the reader to feel sympathy with the main character despite her delusions. Despite Flaubert’s vigorous disclaimer to the contrary, a number of critics of recent vintage have been prompted to interpret” Un Coeur simple” as an ironic commentary on human stupidity and on stultifying bourgeois attitudes. Flaubert’s writings prior to 1876, to be sure, virtually resound with pages of biting satire and bitter ir...
Brombert, Victor. “‘Un Coeur simple’: Tenderness and Irony.” In The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques, Princeton UniversityPress, 1966, pp. 233-45. Sachs, Murray. “‘A Simple Heartg’.” In Reference Guide to Short Fiction,St. James Press, 1994, pp. 899-900. Starkie, Enid. Flaubert the Master, New York: Atheneurn, 1971.
The protagonist of “A Simple Heart,” a poor housemaid living in 19th century France. Félicité is a highly moral, hard-working, and virtuous woman. Félicité is born to working-class parents who die when she is a… read analysis of Félicité Barette.
Félicité represents purity and Christian compassion; she is virtuous, self-sacrificing, and kind-hearted. At eighteen, she initially doesn’t realize that Theodore, the young man she meets...
