And Again

We learned that the parrot is of great importance to Felicite. Flaubert gives importance to Loulou the way he writes about him. Almost half of Simple Soul is about the parrot, even the last sentence of the story is about the parrot. When Felicite is getting sick, deaf, blind and weak, Flaubert writes, “Only one noise penetrated her ears; the parrot’s voice.” The second part of the sentence is independent, separated by the semi colon, clearly giving much more emphasis to the parrot himself, as if the reader is to read it alone, pausing before. Noise rhymes with voice, a pretty sentence, it's nicely put together, because of its importance, not to mention that it is the last sentence of a paragraph.

Loulou the parrot’s death, is painful for Felicite, Flaubert makes the significance, giving two sentences, one after the other, a single paragraph each,

“She wept so sorely that her mistress said: ‘Why don’t you have him stuffed?’

She asked the advice of the chemist, who had always been kind to the bird.”

If, the two sentences are together and joined to the previous paragraph, it would not be as meaningful. For the second sentence, a person (the chemist) would be expected to “always been kind to” Felicite, and not the bird, but because the bird is more important than Felicite (going back to the meaningless life that she had) he has “always been kind to the bird”, and not Felicite. In the first sentence, it is surprising that the mistress cared about Felicite, through out the story, she hasn’t given a damn about her, now she does, because of the bird, again.

I like Flaubert, I’m getting every time better at understanding his style, I’m probably not an expert; But I’m not lost, which is good.

(Noticed my style?)