A Simple Heart” by Gustave Flaubert (1877)

Flaubert wrote this story for his old friend and “fellow

troubadour” George Sand. It’s the story of Félicité, an old

servant-woman, and the diminishing loves in her life, the final

one being a (live – at first) parrot. It has a sombre novelistic

density, and is touching and tender, comic and grotesque.

Control of tone is central to its effect. It also exemplifies the

Flaubertian principle that irony and sympathy are not

incompatible. Sand died before she was able to read it. “So

it is with all our dreams,” noted Flaubert. Julian Barnes