A Simple Heart: Foil 1 key example

Madame Aubain acts as a foil to Félicité in “A Simple Heart,” meaning that her presence in the narrative reveals important aspects of Félicité’s character. When juxtaposing the haughty and emotionally guarded Madame Aubain with the kind and open-hearted Félicité, it becomes clear just how uniquely selfless and moral Félicité is. Flaubert also intentionally makes Madame Aubain upper-class and Félicité working-class, thus highlighting how access to financial resources has nothing to do with whether a person behaves in moral and compassionate ways—this quality emerges from character, he is arguing, rather than from class.

Félicité and Madame Aubain’s contrasting characters come across in the following scene, as Félicité reflects on the argument she just had with Madame Aubain (in which Madame Aubain said that Virginie’s life is inherently more valuable than Victor’s):

Although Félicité had been fed such rough treatment since she was a child, she felt very offended by Madame Aubain. But she soon got over it. After all, it was to be expected that Madame should get upset about her own daughter. For Félicité, the two children were of equal importance; they were bound together by her love for them and it seemed right that they should share the same fate.

Cite this Quote