A Simple Heart

Chapter 1 of A Simple Heart is short but direct, immediately establishing the relationship that will define Félicité’s life: that of employee and employer. By introducing Madame Aubain first, the story highlights the passive, secondary role Félicité will play in her own life. She is Madame Aubain’s housemaid, an identity that shapes her existence even within her own mind; Félicité rarely conceives of herself beyond the boundaries of this inter-class relationship. She will never be able to escape this working-class exploitation, especially as the low wage at which she works causes envy among Madame Aubain’s fellow middle-class employers. They do not regard Félicité as a desirable worker for who she is—her personality, intellect, or even skills—but merely because she can be exploited. This is part of the natural order, Félicité believes, so she orientates her existence around pleasing her boss for very little money. The simile likening her movements to automated machinery takes The Power of Social Class to an extreme, suggesting an almost deterministic understanding of how one’s social position influences one’s experiences and actions. Class, present from the moment of birth, is likewise evident from the novel’s first sentences.

The opening chapter of A Simple Heart also introduces the audience to The Omnipresence of Death and the way in which it punctuates life. Over the course of Félicité’s story, the deaths of those around her will function as important milestones in her life. Death is important even before her story begins, however, as the death of Monsieur Aubain creates the context for Félicité’s employment, plunging Madame Aubain into the financial distress that necessitates cheap labor. Félicité’s life is thus shaped by the death of a man she never meets: Félicité meets Madame Aubain when she is a widow, while she meets Virginie and Paul when they have both recently lost their father. She does not know the family except in their grief, hinting at the way grief will mediate many of Félicité’s relationships (e.g., with Loulou, who reminds her of her deceased nephew). 

Chapter 1 also establishes the way in which the story, mirroring a materialistic bourgeoisie, uses objects to chart material wealth. In the wake of her husband’s death, Madame Aubain is forced to downsize her economic expectations. She must spend less and sell certain things. This reduced economic reality is charted through the descriptions of her new living arrangement. The furniture in her two remaining houses is covered in dust sheets, while the house itself is falling into disrepair. The dilapidated house becomes a metaphor for Madame Aubain’s reduced circumstances. Importantly, this is the economic reality into which Félicité enters. Just as she only comes to know the family in a period of grief, she is introduced to them when they have reached a new material low. Félicité receives a comparatively small wage from a family living in reduced circumstances. She never even experiences wealth vicariously through her employers, as the defining economic relationship in her life is with a family who hires her exactly because they are trying to reduce their expenses.