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.
Character Analysis
Félicité
Content Warning: The novel and guide refer to suicide and attempted rape.
Félicité is the protagonist of A Simple Heart, the narrative of which charts the story of a life marked by loss and exploitation. As a poor, working-class servant, Félicité finds herself at the mercy of 19th-century French society. From men like Théodore who try to take advantage of her sexually to employers like Madame Aubain who mistreat and underpay her, Félicité rarely knows kindness. Her economic hardship is set in place from early in her life. Her parents die when she is a young girl, and after being separated from her siblings, she is thrust into the labor market. At no time is she economically independent, and the extent to which Félicité is overworked and underpaid makes Madame Aubain the envy of her middle-class friends. She spends a lifetime in service to a family and a society that do not value her work or her humanity, and her tragic life functions as a critique of The Power of Social Class in 19th-century France.
In the midst of this economic hardship, Félicité suffers loss after loss. The narrative structure of the story uses death as a regular signpost for developments in Félicité’s life, even when she is not aware of her relationship to these deaths. The story of Félicité’s life begins not with her birth but with the death of Monsieur Aubain; in her newly straitened circumstances, Madame Aubain employs Félicité. Through this work, Félicité comes to love Paul and Virginie, but Paul does not reciprocate this love, while Virginie dies at a young age. Félicité loves her nephew Victor very much, but he also dies. Later, the deaths of her pet parrot and Madame Aubain leave Félicité all alone. In the wake of Madame Aubain’s death, Félicité feels as though she has betrayed her employer by surviving, an ironic critique of an economic relationship in which Félicité cannot even conceive of death without thinking of her lowly position in the social order.
Nevertheless, Félicité can find small joys. She memorializes Virginie and Loulou via keepsakes that bring her comfort—a lock of Virginie’s hair and Loulou’s taxidermized body. These trinkets provide insight into Félicité’s desire for a spiritual understanding of the world. However, Félicité’s understanding of religion is unconventional: She develops a personal relationship with God in quiet rebellion against the oppressive forces of social class and grief that define her life. Much like Félicité herself, whose selflessness and naivety make her an object of both narrative admiration and irony, her idiosyncratic spirituality simultaneously contrasts favorably with organized religion and serves as a satirical critique of her own suffering. Her faith is pure and informed by her love and compassion, but the form it takes—veneration of a stuffed parrot—also verges on the absurd.
Madame Aubain
If the life of Félicité is a portrayal of working-class exploitation, then the story of Madame Aubain provides the corresponding perspective on the middle class. Madame Aubain is an important figure in the story of Félicité’s life. She spends more time with Félicité than anyone else, including Félicité’s own family. Despite this, Madame Aubain never comes to see Félicité as an equal. Madame Aubain views herself and her family as inherently more important and more worthwhile than anything in Félicité’s life. When Félicité shares her concerns for Victor’s well-being to offer her sympathy for Virginie’s suffering, Madame Aubain is dismissive. She does not care about Félicité’s fears, nor can she conceive of any way in which Victor’s life is worth her concern. In this way, Madame Aubain demonstrates how she is never able to put aside the social hierarchy that gives her power and control over Félicité’s life. She values Félicité as an employee (and, in particular, as a cheap employee) rather than as a human being.
The fact that Madame Aubain, like Félicité, endures a great deal of personal suffering only renders her treatment of her maid more callous. Madame Aubain endures the loss of her daughter, Virginie, and never truly overcomes the grief she feels. Her son, Paul, does not provide her with love; he drinks heavily and gambles often, meaning that Madame Aubain must quietly pay off his debts to ensure that the family's reputation is not damaged. This proximity to scandal is a constant concern for Madame Aubain and the cause of one of her biggest upsets. Following the death of Monsieur Bourais, Madame Aubain discovers that he was embezzling her money. More concerning, however, is his illicit affair and his fathering of a secret child. Madame Aubain is horrified, fearing that his behavior and ensuing suicide might make her the subject of rumors and gossip. Madame Aubain fears association with scandal more than she worries about any morals, so much so that this fear contributes to her decline and death. While Félicité never abandons her, Madame Aubain sees no value in Félicité’s loyalty.
Madame Aubain’s death creates a vacuum in Félicité’s life, though it also occasions a rare show of humanity, as she leaves Félicité a small pension. Even this small pension is a stinging reminder of the precarious nature of Félicité’s life, however. After Madame Aubain’s death, Félicité sits alone in a house she does not own. Paul takes all the furniture, leaving Félicité scared that she will be told to leave. The pension is barely enough to survive, while the house itself is crumbling. Madame Aubain leaves Félicité with very little, a material illustration of how little she valued Félicité’s constant loyalty and presence in her life.
Virginie
Virginie is born into a middle-class family but dies before she reaches adulthood. Her close relationship with Félicité is unique in the novel, as it represents a genuine affection that transcends the boundaries of social class. Since she is so young, Virginie does not yet hold the prejudices and expectations that govern Madame Aubain’s understanding of the world; she accepts the validity and sincerity of Félicité’s affections and reciprocates them in kind. The relationship between the middle-class Virginie and the working-class Félicité suggests that social hierarchies are not innate, though the fact that Virginie dies young implies cynicism regarding the possibility of genuine social transformation.
Virginie also functions as the vessel through which Félicité develops an interest in religion. When Virginie is young, she attends catechism class and learns to take communion. Félicité has grown up in a Catholic country, surrounded by religious institutions, yet she has never felt any affinity for religion until she sees Virginie take communion. For Félicité, this is a transcendental moment. Virginie is an innocent figure, someone who is not beholden to class expectations or religious preconceptions. To Félicité, she is the idealized vessel through which spirituality can be experienced (something her name underscores in its reference to virginity and therefore—in this cultural environment—purity). The tragic irony of Félicité’s death is that it preserves her innocence and her transcendence. She plays such an important role in Félicité’s life precisely because she dies without ever learning any of her society’s preconceptions or biases.
Monsieur Bourais
Monsieur Bourais plays a small but significant role in A Simple Heart. He is a middle-class solicitor who provides help to Madame Aubain with the business interests left to her by her dead husband. As the manager of her estate, he is trusted to keep her properties in order. In this way, he is the face of middle-class respectability. His interactions with Félicité subtly reveal a middle-class contempt for working-class people. Though he is often polite and charming, he also mocks Félicité for her inability to read a map when she approaches him about her nephew’s whereabouts; rather than helping her during a time of distress, he derides what he takes to be her lack of intelligence which is, in reality, a lack of education. The exchange particularly suggests Bourais’s contempt for any working-class person who tries to educate themselves—or, implicitly, better their position.
The irony of Bourais’s middle-class “respectability” is that he is the most criminal character in the novel. Later in the story, Madame Aubain is shocked to discover that Monsieur Bourais has died by suicide. In the wake of his death, the community learns that he is not the upstanding, moral man they believed him to be. Not only has he been embezzling his clients’ money, but he has conducted an illicit affair and fathered an illegitimate child. However, Madame Aubain is more concerned about her reputation than the moral outrages of Bourais’s crimes or the tragedy of his suicide. She has no empathy for the man she knew for decades; she is only concerned about how his actions affect her reputation. Bourais’s demise therefore extends the novella’s critique of the middle-class respectability that Bourais himself embodied, suggesting that manners and etiquette do not equate to morality.
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By Gustave Flaubert
