A Simple Soul (1, 2 &3): A Bird, A Flame

The first thing I noticed was that Flaubert uses a lot of describing. He carefully details dresses and loafs of bread and surroundings in general such as people and houses. "This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river." (Flaubert)

The author doesn't really play with the sentences, but is rather objective and focuses more on being detailed and having smooth paragraphs. The vocabulary is not hard to follow although it is formal and uses unusual words as in "The path led at first through undulating grounds, and thence to a plateau, where pastures and tilled fields
alternated"(Flaubert). In the former quote, we find description again: its seems to be a big part of his style since he uses descriptions even to move around his characters.

I think the book is situated in the eighteen hundreds but I can never be completely sure. The way Flauebert show the lack of power of Madame Aubain and the way she is treated as her (dead) husband's accessory rather than his thinking, living wife, shows an old school way of thinking.

It was pleasant to read through his writing because it has a certain amount of poetry without getting impossible to understand. "She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person, for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?" (Flaubert). Sometimes descriptions can get a little bit old, but most of the time the words are so carefully chosen that it keeps you hooked.