A Simple Soul Book

As in Madame Bovary a playful knowing permeates every line Flaubert writes. He will not keep secrets from you, he will let you see everyone's character and intentions as soon as they make appearance on the stage. You just know them. The trouble is, by the end you're still struggling to put it all together. You understand too much or perhaps understand too little. You keep oscillating like a pendulum.

I might be off the mark but Félicité comes off as the antitype of all that makes Emma Bovary, Emma Bovary; yet she is also her psychological twin in that she invents an object of affection on which she might pour out her love, something to anchor her existence beyond the fact of mere being. This time it's a parrot. Is this an allusion to something greater than the story we're being told? Most definitely, even if the eventual interpretation stands outside the text.

When she went to church, she would sit gazing at the picture of Holy Spirit and it struck her that it looked rather like her parrot..

I think it's a deceptively simple story with larger import. I loved the flawless character development with the help of ordinary details telling on the larger currents of Félicité's "simple" life, her dreams and troubles. Although my reading might well have been influenced by having Madame Bovary by the side, but in both cases Flaubert subjects them to the rigours of life in search of happiness, which is always illusive whether you're the reviled Emma Bovary or a model of propriety like Félicité.

It's interesting that the protagonist, who is a maid of a propertied household, carries the same name as Emma's maid from the other novel: the selfsame Félicité.

March '16