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Title: Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert, A.J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0-19-283631-5 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: The Master Is Just Coasting
Comment: Three Tales was Flaubert's attempt to gain widespread acceptance toward the end of his life. It is droning, lazy, unintriguing stuff that contains none of the sparkling gracefulness of his earlier, more famous work. Had this been the single published work of a lesser writer, Three Tales would have been forgotten generations ago.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not Flaubert's Best, But Worth Reading Nonetheless
Comment: In 1877, twenty years after the publication of "Madame Bovary," Gustave Flaubert published "Three Tales," a thin volume containing the stories "A Simple Heart," "The Legend of St Julian Hospitator" and "Herodias." While Robert Baldick's introduction to the Penguin edition says that "Three Tales" is "still generally regarded as [Flaubert's] most successful and most representative work," it is by no means his best work and does not approach the level of literary genius displayed in "Madame Bovary," "Sentimental Education," or "Bouvard and Pecuchet."
The best of the tales is "A Simple Heart," the story of Felicite, a simple and pious servant girl who "loved her mistress with dog-like devotion and veneration." Orphaned at a young age, she is first taken in by a farmer who, "small as she was, [sent] her to look after the cows in the fields." It is a miserable life:
"She went about in rags, shivering with cold, used to lie flat on the ground to drink water out of the ponds, would be beaten for no reason at all, and was finally turned out of the house for stealing thirty sous, a theft of which she was innocent."
Felicite fortunately enters the service of another farmer who appreciates her devoted, unquestioning work habits. She grows into her adult years working for that farmer and then is retained as servant to Madame Aubain. Felicite's life with Madame Aubain forms the heart of the story, the first sentence of Flaubert's narrative adumbrating the whole: "For half a century the women of Pont-l'Eveque envied Madame Aubain her maidservant Felicite."
Felicite's life is a series of loves: of Theodore, a man whom she falls in love with at the age of eighteen and who leaves her for an older, wealthier woman; of the two children of Madame Aubain, who depart her world in different ways; of a nephew, who leaves on a sailing ship; of a poor old dying man who lives in a pig sty; and, finally, of a green parrot named Loulou. Throughout all these loves, "the years slipped by, each one like the last, with nothing to vary the rhythm of the great festivals: Easter, the Assumption, All Saints' Day."
It is interesting to quote what Flaubert had to say about the end of "A Simple Heart," because it is not entirely clear whether it reflects his true feelings or an ironic denial of irony: "When the parrot dies she has it stuffed, and when she herself comes to die she confuses the parrot with the Holy Ghost. This is not at all ironical as you may suppose, but on the contrary very serious and very sad. I want to move tender hearts to pity and tears, for I am tender-hearted myself."
While readers have struggled with whether the three tales are connected in any way, the confusion of Felicite suggests a Flaubertian irony (or perhaps cynicism) that runs through all the stories: that people who live their lives based on religious belief are living lives based on illusion. In the case of Felicite, it is an illusion that is suggested by the confusion of a stuffed green parrot named Loulou with the Holy Ghost. In the remaining two tales, it is suggested in other ways.
"The Legend of St Julian Hospitator" tells the story of Julian, who grows up in a castle and lives a life marked by violence and mysticism. It is the reworking of a well-worn medieval tale depicted in thirty scenes of a stained-glass window Flaubert saw in Rouen Cathedral. It is also a tale that suggests again that the Christian founding myths are perhaps not what they seem. Thus, Julian's dream of life in the Garden of Eden and of Noah's Ark seems like the dream of a world created by a demiurge, a kind of Gnostic vision of brutality rather than harmony and salvation:
"Sometimes, in a dream, he would see himself like our father Adam in the middle of Paradise, with all the birds and beasts around him; and stretching out his arm, he would put them to death. Or else they would file past him, two by two, according to size, from the elephants and lions down to the stoats and ducks, as they did on the day that they entered Noah's Ark. From the shadow of a cave he would hurl javelins at them which never missed their aim, but others would follow them, there would be no end to the slaughter, and he would wake up with his eyes rolling wildly."
There is, finally, "Herodias," in which Flaubert relates the story of the beheading of John the Baptist at the request of Salome. Like the other two tales, "Herodias" is unsettling to the Christian mythos insofar as it emphasizes verisimilitude and the mundane. Instead of painting a picture of a great historical event, "Herodias" tells a very human tale of politics, jealousy and factionalism in ancient Israel. By doing so, it brings the reader back to the original historical touchstones of writers like Josephus and other contemporaries of Herod, thereby attenuating the centuries of religious mythmaking that followed the real world events. Perhaps this is why no less a critic than Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, commenting on "Three Tales," said that, "these eighty pages teach me more about the circumstances, the origins and the background of Christianity than all of Renan's work."
While not his best work, "Three Tales" nonetheless provides remarkable insight into Flaubert's narrative style and his view of literature. It is a style and a view that consistently departs from romanticism (even though the casual reader perhaps thinks of "Madame Bovary" as a romantic story), using techniques and images that draw meticulous scenes of the real and plumb the psychological depths of the mundane. By all means, read "Madame Bovary" and "Sentimental Education," but don't forget "Three Tales" because it is an equally provocative example of Flaubert's literary endeavor.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Flaubert Taster
Comment: Three short stories by Flaubert, each very different, but as the introduction to this edition by Robert Baldick states, each reflects the different styles of his major novels. As such, this book might serve as a "sampler" for someone wanting to investigate Flaubert's works.
I confess to having read the earlier reviews on the Amazon website, and have a slightly different view of the stories (which is fine as enjoyment of fiction is essentially subjective). The first tale, "A Simple Heart" is about Felicite, servant of Mme Aubain. It's a sad, but I thought sympathetically-told story of an inpressionable person who has little intelligence. Admittedly the ending is strange, which might be the cause of others' aversion to the story.
"The Legend of St Julian Hospitator" is, as the title suggests, a two-dimensional story with a religious/moral message. My impression was that Flaubert deliberately intended it to be read in that way. Such tales do not require character development - that is not their purpose.
"Herodias" is a biblico-historical story concerning the events leading up to the killing of John the Baptist. Flaubert takes the opportunity to let his imagination expand the Biblical account.
Each tale is tightly constructed and easily readable, though none will really stick in my mind.
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Title: Bouvard and Pecuchet (The Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, Alban J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0140443207 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1976 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Modern Library Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, Lafcadio Hearn, Michel Foucault, Marshall C. Olds ISBN: 0375759123 Publisher: Princeton Review Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Oxford World's Classics) by Choderlos De Laclos, Douglas Parmee, Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderl Laclos ISBN: 0192838679 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Immoralist by Andre Gide, Richard Howard ISBN: 0679741917 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Tribute to Freud: Writing on the Wall--Advent by Hilda Doolittle, H, Norman Holmes Pearson ISBN: 0811208974 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: August, 1984 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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