A Simple Heart - Flaubert
Within the text of A Simple Heart, by Flaubert, readers find themselves face to face with a simple character. The character is named Felicite. Felicite, according to parenthood.com, means "fortunate"; Felicity, being off the root of Felicia, means "happy". However, Felicite's life path turns out to be very mocking to the name she was given. Throughout this book, readers have a hard time finding any fortune or happiness within the context of Felicite's simple life.From an outsiders view, Felicite's life is not fortunate by any stretch of the imagination. At an early age, Felicite's parents died and she was essentially left without a family. She was taken in by a farmer where she was mistreated and beaten and then fired for a crime she did not commit. After this point, she met a man who wooed and romanced her, only to be abandoned by him. Her life was not "happy", as the story depicted. At this point, "she gave way to a burst of extravagant grief. She threw herself on the ground, cried aloud, called on the good God, and groaned, all alone in the country till sunrise" (Flaubert, 6). She was eventually taken into Madame Aubain's residence, where she spent most of the passing of this book.Madame Aubain's residence is the perfect pl
She spends the beginning of her time there playing with the children allowing them to ride on her as if she were a horse. She received the pet as a gift and takes a liking to it immediately. In this aspect, the parrot becomes the perfect form with which Felicite experienced religion. She solves her own problem in the best and most pure way she can: the parrot becomes her tangible deity. In the end, however, it is God Himself who can see the hearts of His children. Given what we know, we can hardly fault her for her devotion. For example, when Felicite was on a trip with the Aubains, she came across a lost sister, Nastasie, whom she had not seen in many years. Felicite took that to mean that Jesus Christ was, in reality, an actual lamb and from that point on she loved lambs more than previously. Felicite had a simple mind and saw things in very simple ways. The root of the word "idolatry" is "idol", defined as "any thing or person that is the object of excessive or supreme devotion, or that usurps the place of God in human affection" (The Oxford English Dictionary, 629). A parrot, by its very nature, gives back what its owner gives to it; all it knows to do is to repeat. She has the bird stuffed and keeps him in her room on something that could be likened to a shrine. As Felicite is on her death bed, she sees a parrot come down from the parting heavens as she took her final breath.
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