A SIMPLE HEART (Un coeur simple)
by Gustave Flaubert, 1877

"A Simple Heart" ("Un coeur simple") is by far the best known and most often reprinted of the trio of stories Gustave Flaubert published in 1877 in the small volume Three Tales (Trois contes). Although it was the second of the three stories to be completed, Flaubert chose to place it first in the published volume, perhaps because it was in subject matter the closest of the three to his private life and feelings. The story is set in his native Normandy during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, and the protagonist, a humble servant named Félicité, was modeled on a woman who had been a servant of fond memory in Flaubert's own family.

The story may be more popular than the other two—a medieval legend and a tale of biblical times—because it has greater immediacy for the modern reader. In addition, it has a thematic resemblance to Flaubert's most popular novels, Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education (L'Education Sentimentale), both of which also depict in realistic detail the personal world in which he grew up. The novels are long, however, and "A Simple Heart" is therefore often recommended as the best brief introduction to Flaubert's literary world and to his manner of writing.

"A Simple Heart" depicts in scrupulously accurate detail the drab and loveless life of a poor, uneducated servant. Getting the details right was part of Flaubert's method in all he wrote. But Flaubert's artistic energy is chiefly invested here not in depicting a surface reality but in the far more important goal of deeply probing the inner truth of Félicité's spirit and of the bourgeois society she serves. His aim is to understand and reveal the reasons for their mutual failure ever to develop meaningful human contact with each other. "A Simple Heart" is a painful study in human limitations and the spiritual isolation they can impose. In that respect it resembles both Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education, which study similar human limitations and their consequences. But it has always been a crude oversimplification, as Flaubert himself protested, to identify any of these works as mere exercises in literary realism. Flaubert is much more profound.

The opening section of "A Simple Heart" identifies Félicité as the longtime envy of Pont-L'Evêque's womenfolk, not as a person but as an invaluable possession of Mme Aubain. Everyone sees in Félicité, as the last sentence of the opening states, a mechanical female made of wood. No one imagines that she has human feelings. The following three sections flash back to recite the raw materials that make up her life, namely, a long series of unrequited attachments: to a farmhand named Théodore, to Mme Aubain, to Mme Aubain's daughter Virginie, to her belatedly discovered nephew Victor, to Polish soldiers, to a sick old outcast of a man, le père Colmiche, thought to have committed atrocities during the Reign of Terror in 1793, and finally to a parrot. None of these attachments satisfies any of Félicité's needs but one—her boundless need to give unstintingly of herself to others. All of the attachments, including the parrot, soon vanish or die. She has the parrot stuffed, however, and in old age takes to worshiping it, in her senile confusion mistaking it for the Holy Ghost.

The stuffed parrot becomes the last attachment of her life, revealing the unbroken lifelong pattern of her existence and the meaning of the story's title. For Félicité is nothing but heart, and her simple and only function is to love, to give of herself. She is also simple in the sense of being uneducated and uncomplicated. She is not given to anything so sophisticated as introspection, self-doubt, or doubts about others. She loves simply and without second thoughts. The pattern of her life is therefore tragic, for she can neither stop herself from loving nor ever be loved in return, since others see her as functioning automatically.

About the character of Félicité and the meaning of Flaubert's title, there is a strong consensus, but the interpretation of the concluding paragraph has sharply divided critics. As Félicité smilingly draws her last breath, is she being rewarded for her simple faith and selfless existence by being vouchsafed a vision of the Holy Ghost escorting her to heaven? Or does the vision of the Holy Ghost, in the fantastic guise of a gigantic parrot, signify rather that with her final breath she is experiencing one last illusory love? Is Flaubert thus making the visionary parrot a mocking symbol of Félicité's bitter destiny on earth, which was to be ever the victim of love unrequited? With the achingly beautiful prose of the final paragraph, is Flaubert inviting the reader to understand that Félicité's is a blissful death since she believes that she has reached the beatific state promised by her name? Or is he instead solemnly reminding the reader of the pattern of Félicité's life of bitter disappointment and inviting us to ponder sympathetically the bleak tragedy symbolized by the vision on which her life ended?

Flaubert has clearly left ample room in the text of "A Simple Heart" to allow for different and even diametrically opposed interpretations. Whatever interpretation readers favor, however, agreement is universal that "A Simple Heart" is a deeply moving and supremely beautiful work of art.

—Murray Sachs