Simply Looking For Love

As I finished reading Gustave Flaubert’s A Simple Soul over the weekend, I noticed how passionate and loving Flaubert’s protagonist, Felicite was towards everybody and everything. As Loulou becomes Felicite’s greatest love, Flaubert states that they “held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three phrases of his repertory over and over, Felicite replying by words that had no greater meaning, but in which she poured out her feelings.” (Ch. 4) In the first three chapters, I noticed how Flaubert uses complex sentences to both narrate his story in a free indirect style and build our perception of his characters. Here we see how Flaubert both continues his story about the parrot and Felicite, their complex relationship which isn’t more than another example of Felicite’s total, overwhelming love and shows us how Felicite was an open person who spoke through her feelings even when speaking to a wall. We are not told how she is but it becomes our task to stop and deduce her personality out of her actions. The book describes Felicite’s tragic life in a way that opens a more complex path for our minds to analyze (much akin to what we do in our own personal dilemmas) than using the lighter thought processes required to processing a straightforward story.

Flaubert’s descriptions of Felicite’s life are given to us in such a way for us to understand the process and for the author to connect independent ideas. He states that a “weakness came over her; the misery of her childhood, the disappointment of her first love, the departure of her nephew, the death of Virginia; all these things came back to her at once, and, rising like a swelling tide in her throat, almost choked her.” (Ch. 4) We are given the chance to reflect on what happens to Felicite independently when the event is being narrated, but in this sentence we are shown the condensed version, the overwhelming disastrous life Felicite has lived. This sentence makes us feel sorry for Felicite who is condemned by the commas to continue suffering. The list continues and so does Felicite’s sorrow.

When Loulou arrives from Fellacher’s shop we are given a description of his new appearance. Flaubert describes Loulou as “sitting bold upright on a branch which could be screwed into a mahogany pedestal, with his foot in the air, his head on one side, and in his beak a nut which the naturalist, from love of the sumptuous, had gilded. She put him in her room.” (Ch. 4) Flaubert has planned the new course his story will take. He includes the short sentence “She put him in her room” to now describe her room, the last setting of the story. The sentence is of a completely different length compared to the first, making the reader have a needed break from the complex plot and new insight that will later build the end of the book. This planning ahead that Flaubert single-handedly does immortalizes his sentences that simply sound right. His paragraph breaks are necessary to highlight the important but sometimes unnoticed sentences that are the soul to his writing. Doing so makes Felicite’s dramatic life be forever remembered and helps us, Flaubert’s entertained audience, become intensely impressed by his amazing writing about a person who was simply looking for love.