The Only Savior Is Lost

For a soul in despair the only thing that can save it is another soul. By the time Felicite was young, she fell in love. Her life had been miserable from her birth and on, but he was still young and did not expect that she was going to be bleak until the day of her death. At this point it was probable that she could have expected more in life. and so after falling in love her fate could have been much different. Maybe a family, a good house. This could have been the only point in which in the novel, the plot could have been different. But obviously, it is at the mercy and hands of Mr. Flaubert, and it wouldn't be a Simple Heart if she had lived happily ever after in a beautiful house in the country. When her love was lost,the story's main theme got into track giving the reader and Felicite no hope until the last page has been turned. As she lost him, her heart closed up to any other lovable prospect: "When the time grew near, she ran to meet her lover. But instead of Theodore, one of his friends was at the meeting-place. He informed her that she would never see her sweetheart again; for, in order to escape the conscription, he had married a rich old woman, Madame Lehoussais, of Toucques"(Chapter 2, Page 2, Paragraph 3).

Theodore had also betrayed his heart for he had given it away to a false love, in order to escape the hardships of life, that his preceding counterpart would suffer all of her life. He has wasted his opportunity to love, he is placing love and money in the very common balance. The money won, and Felicite lost her chance to be saved from her misery, but as we well know this could have never happened.

The Genesis Of Felicite

After the first chapter, the reader is bewildered. It is expected for the novel to be torment full, but maybe one does not consider the reasons or meaning of the misery that is seen. to begin with the sole name of "Felicite". This means extreme happiness, almost euphoria. This is the way in which Flaubert mocks his own character by giving her a name that does not match the way in which this character is going to survive and live inside the novel. This way maybe foreshadowing for a brief moment the irony that can be found in the novel, and the way a woman suffers from the day she was born, and only achieves happiness the day of her death.:"Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart"(Chapter 2, Paragraph 1). This is referring to the rough childhood and rupture in her family when she was young. But as Flaubert refers to it, as an episode every other woman has, he is burring Felicite even more into the ground. He is treating her as a normal being, when she is not. She is the heart an humble but harsh example of a miserable life in the 19th century in Europe were the height of snobbery existed, and in the deepest sewer, people with lives like Felicite. And so, as Flaubert tries to compare the troubles of Felicite to any other woman's troubles he is taking her importance away to make her even more gloomy, even to the book itself.
He could also mean that women suffer too much, but that would be drifting of the main point of the novel, with no sense in the deep meaning of it. The more sensitive and according interpretation could be the fact that after she has been doomed all of her life, her heart exists and is obviously the objective of the novel, the way in which her simple heart is able to appreciate things, even if at the end of er life, and simplicity to the point of having an exotic view of what she though was heaven. Her heart made her feel more than a simple soul would have, and this is why Felicite lived the way she did, to proof the simplicity, but honesty of a person's true heart and soul.

Vesta's Clock and Madame Aubain

It is quite interesting the simplicity of the way in which Flaubert's style shifts from a rich and envied woman, to a woman who is poor now, and lives in a rather run down house. In the wall, a clock is hanging. But not any clock. It is a clock resembling the temple of Vesta, the goddess of home, hearth, and household. but in the scene that is depicted here, the idea of "vestal" is contrary to what is being described. "On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than the garden(chapter one)".
Madame Aubin now lives in a different way she lived before. Her house is no temple of Vesta. On the contrary, she is deprived of all she had before. The novel is not centered only in Felicite, as many other readers have interpreted. The novel does emphasize in her life, but it also shows how in others life is seen, and actually lived. but in the first sentences, Madame Aubin is perfectly described. once wealthy, but now she is lost maybe with the absence of her husband, or with the fact of having no more ambition in life. She worked, and slept. She aged quickly. "It communicated with a smaller room, in which there were two little cribs, without any mattresses"(chapter one). This is almost conspicuous since after a life of sorrow, a woman expects not to have any children. She is left with that emotional emptiness of a a heart full of love never used, and her arms empty for ever. The cribs are her desire, but there is no mattress that can hold a child. In the first pages, the book contains misery already.

Gustav Flaubert. Simple Soul

I am using a different copy of A Simple Soul.
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gustave_Flaubert/A_Simple_Soul/Chapter_I_p1.html

Gustav Flaubert. Simple Soul

I am using a different copy of A Simple Soul.
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gustave_Flaubert/A_Simple_Soul/Chapter_I_p1.html