Literary Devices in A Simple Heart
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Good Old Days"A Simple Heart" takes place around Pont-l'Évêque, a small town in Normandy, France that's famous for its cheese. (Read more about it and practice your French here.) Flaubert himself...
Narrator Point of View
Classic Realist, and classic Flaubert. The omniscient, uninvolved third-person narrator lets the Realist author trick the reader into believing they are giving us a totally impartial, unbiased visi...
Genre
"A Simple Heart", like most of Flaubert's work, is slam-dunk Realism, part of a whole literary movement that was happening in the nineteenth century. Its epicenter? France. Flaubert was at ground z...
Tone
For the most part, the narrator is pretty kind to Félicité—even if she does hang around with a stuffed bird and thinks that you can get from Cuba to France by land. It's subtle, but the narrato...
Writing Style
As most Realist writers, Flaubert doesn't mess around. He tells Félicité's story in chronological order, starting with her childhood (although that only gets a paragraph) and ending with her deat...
What's Up With the Title?
"A Simple Heart" must refer to Félicité's heart. She's simple in that her love for her family and Madame Aubain's family is one thousand percent. She doesn't hold back, isn't complicated, doesn't...
What's Up With the Ending?
The story ends with Félicité dying, and the last thing she sees as she breathes her last breath is "a giant parrot." What the heck? Is this a joke? Well, kind of. It's a reference to Loulou, her...
Tough-o-Meter
Just cruise along with Flaubert through the French countryside. The style is straightforward and the story is matter-of-fact. Nothing to confuse you really; just a pleasant, thought-provoking read.
Plot Analysis
A Maid and Nothing MoreThe story is conveniently divided into five sections that pretty much correspond to the classic plot analysis categories. Section one is just a description of Madame Aubain's...
Trivia
Long live Loulou! Julian Barnes wrote a novel called Flaubert's Parrot about a century after Flaubert wrote about Félicité's parrot. (Source)It's been claimed that Flaubert is the originator of t...
Steaminess Rating
There are some euphemistic references to sex, but nobody ever comes out and talks about it, just like you would expect from a proper nineteenth-century story. Madame Aubain and Monsieur Bourais loc...
Allusions
July Revolution (3.85)Comte d'Artois (5.33)