A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert [PDF]

Information: A Simple Soul

• Author: Gustave Flaubert
• Publication Date: 1877
• Main Characters:
  • Félicité: The protagonist, a poor and devoted servant who spends her entire life in selfless service, loving deeply despite constant loss.
  • Madame Aubain: Félicité's employer, a middle-class widow in Pont-l'Évêque who benefits from Félicité's loyalty but rarely reciprocates her affection.
  • Virginie Aubain: Madame Aubain's daughter, whom Félicité loves like her own child. She dies young from illness.
  • Victor: Félicité's nephew, a young sailor whose death at sea devastates her.
  • Loulou: A parrot given to Félicité who becomes her most cherished companion and, after death, a symbol she conflates with the Holy Spirit.
• Brief Summary: A Simple Soul chronicles the entire life of Félicité, a poor and uneducated servant in the Norman town of Pont-l'Évêque. After being abandoned by her first love, Théodore, she enters the service of the widowed Madame Aubain and devotes herself completely to the household. She pours her affection into Madame Aubain's children, Virginie and Paul, and later into her nephew Victor, but each of these beloved figures is lost to illness, the sea, or indifference. In her later years, Félicité receives a parrot named Loulou, who becomes her closest companion. After Loulou dies and is stuffed, the aging servant begins to confuse the bird with the Holy Spirit, and in her final moments, she experiences a transcendent vision as the Corpus Christi procession passes below her window.
• Thematic Analysis: The central themes of A Simple Soul revolve around love, loss, faith, and class. Flaubert examines how Félicité's boundless capacity for devotion persists through repeated grief, transforming ordinary affection into something that borders on the sacred. The novella also offers a sharp commentary on social class: Félicité's inner life is as rich and complex as any aristocrat's, yet the world around her barely notices she exists.
• Historical Context: Published in 1877 as part of the collection "Trois Contes" (Three Tales), A Simple Soul was written during the final years of Flaubert's life, a period marked by financial difficulties and creative doubt. The story draws on Flaubert's memories of a real servant named Julie who worked for his family in Rouen. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century provincial France, the novella captures a society where rigid class boundaries determined the entire shape of a person's existence.