Realism in Short Fiction Gustave

Realism in Short Fiction

Gustave Flaubert's short story "A Simple Heart" is a prime example of the literary genre of realism. Throughout the story, the character of Felicite performs the mundane and everyday tasks of a servant. Though her life has important events and truly life-altering moments, they are not unusual, but of the normal life-changing variety. She suffers through a broken heart and several deaths; she loses her health and her hearing, she becomes confused in old age, and eventually, she dies. There is nothing fantastical in the tale; Felicite never does anything out of the ordinary. This is the essence of her character and largely comprises the point of the story -- she lives her life, which is not particularly happy, but as she is the one living it she doesn't notice that, and ekes out happiness in her own pathetically rendered way -- a cynical, yet realistic view of many human lives.

This is also what Leo Tolstoy meant in his short story, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," when he said, "Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." His life is not nearly as depressing as Felicite's; he has a family and is upwardly mobile, using friendships to maneuver his way into better positions both economically and socially. The details of his life are as mundane as Felicite's, if more lucrative. As he grows more obsessed with his work he loses touch with his family and other things that presumably used to bring him joy. He begins to suffer all the more when he learns that he is dying. Death is not easy for him, either; he suffers from a pain in his side for a long time first. The reason an ordinary life is considered so terrible is because Ilyich is blind to the ordinariness. Only on his death bed does he realize the difference between a true life of fulfillment and an artificial life of selfishness and greed. Ilyich was not exactly a miser in life, but he was so focused on work that he missed the genuine moments of life that he could have had with his family and other experiences. It is ordinary to walk past the roses without smelling them, and yet it is terrible no to take the time to stop.