Flaubert's Parrot

The chapter presents three different chronologies of Flaubert’s life, viewing events from different perspectives. These subjective accounts are broken into three sections.

The first section is a detailed, factual account of the life, the works, and the death of Gustave Flaubert. It begins with “1821 Birth of Gustave Flaubert” (24) and then details the arrival of his nurse, friendships, earliest works, loves, travels, literary success, and his eventual death. The entry ends by noting that Flaubert died “full of honor, widely loved, and still working hard to the end” (27), presenting his life as a happy success.

The second section begins with the death of Caroline and Emile-Cléophas Flaubert in 1817, who would have been Gustave’s older siblings. It views the writer’s life in a more depressing manner, mentioning how his father bought a plot of land in a cemetery, fully expecting most of the Flaubert children to die young. The same events are included but viewed in a negative fashion. To read this account, Flaubert’s life is marked only by death, failure, and tragedy. His life ends in commercial and critical failure; Flaubert dies “impoverished, lonely and exhausted” (30).

The third and final section is more abstract, composed entirely of journal entries written by Flaubert throughout his life. It begins in 1842 and strikes a self-reflective tone. Flaubert diagnoses his flaws and notes how his various losses and successes affect him on a personal level.

The chapter begins with the observation that definitions can be malleable. A net could be either “a meshed instrument designed to catch fish” or “a collection of holes tied together with string” (35). This makes the role of the biographer almost impossible. Geoffrey describes his first meeting with Ed Winterton; they reached for the same copy of a Turgenev book and then went for tea. Over time, they develop a relationship and a shared interest in Juliet Herbert, the mysterious governess to Flaubert’s niece and “a great hole tied together with string” (37). The exact role Juliet played in Flaubert’s life depends on which biographer is to be believed.

Geoffrey details what is known about Flaubert’s time in London, where Juliet Herbert spent a great deal of time. Geoffrey meets Ed and discovers that he has been sacked. Ed slowly reveals what he knows about Juliet. Ed looks “shifty” (40) while confessing that he paid only £50 for a collection of letters owned by Juliet Herbert. He eventually reveals that Juliet and Flaubert enjoyed an incredibly close romantic relationship. Geoffrey believes the letters could be worth “perhaps a thousand times” (40) what Ed paid.

However, Ed says that he has burned all of the letters. As Geoffrey becomes silently indignant, Ed tells him how the letters included a request from Flaubert to Juliet, requesting that—in the event of his death—she “burn both sides of the correspondence” (44). Similarly, Flaubert asks Juliet to lie about the content of the letters if she is ever asked what they contain. As they prepare to leave the table, Geoffrey makes a “deeply unfair” (44) remark about Ed’s favorite writer, Edmund Gosse.

This chapter is broken down into several sections, all titled after animals relevant to Flaubert’s life. The first is “The Bear,” based on Geoffrey’s summation that “Gustave was the Bear. His sister Caroline was the Rat” (45). He is a bear because he considers himself an outsider. In his letters, Flaubert compares himself to various animals depending on his mood but “mainly, secretly, essentially, he is the Bear” (46). He compares himself at one point to white polar bears, “the aristocrat of bears” (48), as they exist furthest from humans and cannot be tamed.

Flaubert compares himself to a camel in the second section. Perhaps, Geoffrey suggests, because a camel “cannot help being serious and comic at the same time” (50). The third section is titled “The Sheep,” named after an encounter Flaubert enjoys with a “five-legged sheep with a tail in the shape of a trumpet” (50). The fourth section is titled “The Monkey, the Donkey, the Ostrich, the Second Donkey, and Maxime Du Camp,” based on an incident Flaubert writes about in his letters.

The fifth section is named “The Parrot” and begins by exploring the French etymology of the word “perroquet.” Geoffrey explores again the issue of the two competing stuffed parrots, as well as other parrots which are dotted throughout Flaubert’s life. One anecdote tells the story of a man who taught a parrot to say the name of his dead lover. After the death of the bird, the man becomes convinced that he is a parrot.

The final section, titled “Dogs,” lists the various dogs that appeared throughout Flaubert’s life. These include a Newfoundland called Nero, to whom Flaubert whispered all his secrets, and Julio, a greyhound. Geoffrey also discusses the fictional dog which appears in Madame Bovary, and the ancestor of one of Flaubert’s romantic interests who finds himself forced to abandon a copy of Salammbô in the jungle.

Geoffrey deplores coincidences. He considers irony to be “one way of legitimizing coincidences” (61); ironies frequently flocked to Flaubert. As such, Geoffrey begins to list a number of the ironies found in Flaubert’s life. There was the time Flaubert climbed the Great Pyramid of Cheops, only to find the business card of a man from Rouen at the summit (actually placed there by Maxime Du Camp). Finally, there is the strange coincidence at funerals. When Flaubert’s sister Caroline died, her coffin would not fit into the narrow grave. At Flaubert’s own funeral, the grave was dug too short. Geoffrey asks about the meanings of these coincidences and ironies: “was it meant to be a chuckling advertisement for his own sensibility; a tease about the gritty, unpolished surface of the desert; or might it just have been a joke on us?” (66).

Geoffrey explores his distaste for critics, providing an example by Dr. Enid Starkie. While Starkie notes that Emma Bovary’s eyes change color throughout Madame Bovary, Geoffrey “never noticed the heroine’s rainbow eyes” (68). He notes all the references to Emma’s eyes in Madame Bovary and compares the time Flaubert spent making his heroine’s eyes appear “tragic” (73) with the time “spent by Dr. Starkie in carelessly selling him short” (73). He also criticizes Starkie’s French accent, though admits that much of his resentment is transferred across from Flaubert himself. Geoffrey defends the imperfection of writers; critics, he believes, are in danger of growing too familiar with their subjects. He remembers another lecture he attended which explored the theme of mistakes in literature and lists a number of examples.

Geoffrey dismisses “internal mistakes” in literature, deciding that he is “more surprised by how few mistakes writers make” (71). He mockingly recalls a mistake made by Starkie, in which she included a portrait of Flaubert in a book about the writer, though the portrait was of someone else entirely. Starkie’s failure to understand or research Flaubert properly leaves Geoffrey feeling “furious” (73).