Flaubert's Parrot

“Few writers believed more in the objectivity of the written text, in the insignificance of the writer’s personality; yet still we disobediently pursue.”

Geoffrey states that this so-called “objectivity of the written text” (13) is a myth—a myth ruthlessly exposed throughout the book. This lack of objectivity is not just true of Flaubert’s own works, but also in the way real life permeates Geoffrey’s search for truth about the stuffed parrot. It does not matter which parrot is the authentic one found in Flaubert’s apartment. Rather, the “objective truth” (13) is what is revealed about Geoffrey throughout his journey.

“But here, in this unexceptional green parrot, preserved in a routine yet mysterious fashion, was something which made me feel I had almost known the writer. I was both moved and cheered.”

Flaubert’s Parrot is akin to a platonic romance between Flaubert and Geoffrey, his erstwhile amateur biographer. In discovering the two stuffed parrots, the widowed biographer is given a renewed purpose in life. It sets up the novel, showing the biographer’s quest to find a truth about a seemingly inconsequential part of Flaubert’s life. As the story develops, the seemingly inconsequential parrot gains added significance. Trying to find the truth about it draws Geoffrey closer to the writer and, in the absence of his wife, makes him feel as though he has a close and meaningful relationship. Thus, it makes him feel both “moved and cheered” (17).

“The soldier has never heard of Flaubert, but is longing to meet Coppée.”

The soldier invited to the dinner party commits an unknowing faux pas which reflects upon Flaubert’s celebrity. With so many of the anecdotes and stories stemming from the recollections of people like Du Camp and Sand, the social circles in which Flaubert operated were important to him. Given how obsessed he was about the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie, he would surely be rankled by the solider failing to recognize him. Even when Flaubert was among the most famous writers of his generation, his desired audience was never quite the people he had in mind. Rather, he was surrounded by those whose work he supposedly loathed.

“You can define a net in one of two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally, you would say that it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define a net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string.”

The notion of perspective comes up again and again. In this quote, Geoffrey uses a metaphor (potentially stolen from an unnamed source) to reveal the slippery nature of comprehension. To most people, a net is a defined and clear object. But by switching the focus from the string of the net to the spaces between the strings, the net is completely redefined. Geoffrey is applying the same theory to the life of his favorite writer, taking the commonly accepted facts of Flaubert’s life and holding them up to closer examination, hoping to reveal a new truth by portraying them from a different angle. He hopes to find the equivalent of the space between the string in the life of Flaubert. Whether it is in the collection of letters found by Ed or in the true nature of the stuffed parrot, he hopes that a change in perspective will reveal a new truth about the writer.

“Hypothesis is spun directly from the temperament of the biographer.”

As Geoffrey travels deeper and deeper into the mystery that is Flaubert’s life, he begins to add new and interesting dimensions to the writer’s biography. Many of these dimensions stem from the quoted works of others; many biographers of Flaubert have their work referenced and dismissed. Geoffrey has no qualms about outright rejecting certain claims about Flaubert’s life, while explaining why others come to certain conclusions (and often following this with an explanation of why they are wrong). Thus, he arrives at the above quote. So much of the reported facts about Flaubert’s life are guesses, estimates, and hypotheses, often built on shaky foundations. Geoffrey blames these differences on the “temperament of the biographer” (37), therefore demonstrating again the meaninglessness of the search for an objective truth about a historical figure. If so many of the details of Flaubert’s life stem from the biographer’s temperament, how are they to be believed? This question forms the foundation of the novel.

“What happened to the truth is not recorded.”

Following on from the previous quote, the sentence above reveals how difficult it is to uncover an objective truth about Flaubert. With so many details of the writer’s life now lost to the mists of time, it is impossible to form a complete account of his life. However, there are historically relevant documents still in existence. The letters recovered (and then burned) by Ed Winterton, for instance, contain potentially revelatory details about the life of Flaubert. But they were lost (and therefore unable to inform biographies of the writer) and then they were burned (and unlikely to ever be able to inform future biographies). If details such as these are constantly being discovered and lost, it will be impossible to write a complete and objective biography. As is true of so many aspects of Flaubert’s life, “what happened to the truth is not recorded” (60).

“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?”

In this quote, Geoffrey explores the realities of trying to impose motivation on the loose collection of facts which exist about Flaubert’s life. Because the complete details of the writer’s life are not available to the biographer, it is impossible to discern tone, meaning, and anything else from the biographical details passed down over the years. In this instance, Geoffrey points out that one aspect of Flaubert’s life could equally be considered an advert, a tease, an undiscovered truth, or just a joke played on future historians who tried to write about him. That Geoffrey knows this and continues his journey anyway reveals that the quest for objective truth is not ever intended to end. Rather, it is the journey itself which is instructive and more important.

“Is there a perfect reader somewhere, a total reader?”

While so much of the book concerns the search for the objective truth of the writer, Geoffrey begins to expand this search to include the reader. The notion of the “perfect reader” (68) is brought into question, reflecting the inherent biases of those who read Flaubert and then hope to write biographies of him. Those biases play out in terms of which facts and truths the biographers include and exclude from their work. They become imperfect readers, as everything they read and analyze in Flaubert’s work can be called into question.

Geoffrey himself is not immune to bias: Throughout the novel, it becomes increasingly clear that the infidelity and the untimely death of his wife causes him to focus on certain parts of Flaubert’s life more than others. He spends a great deal of time on Flaubert’s own infidelities and romantic affairs. Thus Geoffrey becomes an imperfect reader; he is not a total reader and his book is only a fraction of the length of Flaubert’s collected writings. Though Geoffrey acknowledges this difficulty, he is not completely absolved of the problem. He brings his own concerns and interests to the table. As such, he is a self-aware reader, though still not a “perfect reader” (68). Whether this is a better point of view is not scrutinized, but—at least from Geoffrey’s perspective—he believes it adds a degree of authenticity to his work which is missing from the work of others.

“You expect something from me too, don’t you? It’s like that nowadays.”

This direct address to the reader contains a self-awareness and trace of irony. Geoffrey is aware of the reader’s expectations and is increasingly aware of his lack of objectivity in a search for an objective truth about Flaubert. The quote is important in the discussion of how the text itself is an attempt to create an objective biography. This discussion of readers’ expectations is clearly a hallmark of literature “nowadays” (78), Geoffrey believes, though the extent to which he is willing to oblige these expectations is unclear.

“This is the attraction, and also the danger, of irony: the way it permits a writer to be seemingly absent from his work, yet in fact hintingly present.”

Irony is both attractive and dangerous. It allows the “writer to be seemingly absent from his work” (79), which is something Flaubert strove for and Geoffrey rejects. For a writer who is obsessed with Flaubert’s work, Geoffrey’s own writing seems to contradict many of Flaubert’s most essential rules. If Flaubert hoped to divorce the author from the work in the quest to write an objectively beautiful story, then Geoffrey’s inclusion of his own biographical details seems to flout these rules.

However, there is a separation between the narrative author (Geoffrey Braithwaite) and the actual author (Julian Barnes). Barnes is absent from the work, while Braithwaite is the narrator and central protagonist of the novel. This creates an inherent irony in the text. It seems to wear its authorial biography on its sleeve but at the same time hides the actual details of its author’s life. The reader learns all about Geoffrey Braithwaite (a fictional creation) while learning nothing about Julian Barnes (a real person). This problem, particularly in relation to Flaubert and his rules for literature, helps to create the internal tension of the novel.

“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat.”

While Geoffrey has found himself in stark opposition to many of his rivals for most of the story, he admits a fellowship in the above quote. The further the present moves away from the events of the past, the more difficult it becomes to form a complete and total comprehension of events. Geoffrey knows that he is hopelessly fixated on the past (in his case, the life and work of Gustave Flaubert) but feels unable to extricate himself. In this respect, he acknowledges he is no different from his fellow biographers, even if he vehemently disagrees with them over the details of Flaubert’s life. There is a comradery in the admission, a sense of belonging to a social group. While new facts might be emerging about Flaubert’s life, the fact that they are moving further away from his life is an unstoppable problem in their pursuit. This fellowship is doomed, but they find solace in the pursuit.

“But he didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress.”

The rise of the railway is often used as an exemplar of progress. Here, Geoffrey reveals that Flaubert (a contemporary of the rise of the railway) did not believe this to be the case. Indeed, he considered quite the opposite to be true. The railway functions as a metaphor for the life of Flaubert. If the commonly accepted truth about the railways being a sign of progress is just an illusion, then the facts of Flaubert’s life could also be considered illusions. Geoffrey suggests that this could be the case.

“A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel. The same is true with these stubs of books.”

As with the image of the nets and the spaces between the strings, the idea of a pier is being looked upon in a new light. Rather than simply being a piece of infrastructure, Geoffrey points out that can also be considered a “disappointed bridge” (111). It is a bridge which never reached its destination or fulfilled its potential. Viewed in relation to how Flaubert’s career petered out into a string of disappointments, the metaphorical suggestion is that Flaubert himself was a pier, a disappointed bridge which never quite reached a destination. The “stubs of books” (111) are the books which Flaubert died before completing, represent a way in which the bridge might have been completed. However, as Geoffrey suggests, he never managed to reach the other side of the water.

“He has proved not a tamer of wild beasts, but a tamer of wild lives.”

This quote establishes the difference between Flaubert’s self-perception and that of his endless biographers. Geoffrey notes that Flaubert referred to himself as a wild beast. This image is quite comic when considering the actual life of Flaubert. He is described as a bloated shut-in, suffering under the glare of his mother and his niece, as well as the societal expectations placed upon him (and the expectations he placed upon himself). To describe this kind of pathetic figure as a “tamer of wild beasts” (115) seems ridiculous. However, Geoffrey modifies the notion, suggesting that the canon of literature left by Flaubert amounts to the taming of “wild lives” (115). The author himself is not a wild beast nor a tamer of such beasts, but the characters he included in his books demonstrate his complete understanding of people. His ability to portray and capture them in literature is a feat of equal measure. Flaubert might not have been a lion tamer, but his skills as a writer make him even more admirable.

“The writer who imagines that the novel is the most effective way of taking part in politics is usually a bad novelist, a bad journalist, and a bad politician.”

In addressing the criticism levied at Flaubert that he was not interested in politics, Geoffrey turns the criticism back on the critics. The form of the novel is not conducive to disseminating political thought, he suggests, and anyone who suggests otherwise misunderstands both novels and politics. Here, Geoffrey’s thoughts and opinions seem to correlate with Flaubert’s own. The quote echoes Flaubert’s contrarian sentiment, irony, and belief that literature should strive to exorcise the personality of its creator. These qualities lead to the idea that the novel is a poor form for conveying political messaging. Here, then, we see the ways in which Geoffrey’s ideology and his writing style are influenced by the man he admires most.

“Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence.”

Again, this quote of Geoffrey’s could easily come from one of Flaubert’s letters. In particular, the chapter, written from Louise’s perspective, contains many quotes from Flaubert in which he admonishes her for her belief that poetry can be an elevating art form. Once again, Geoffrey allows his hero’s style to influence his own beliefs. It is as though Geoffrey wishes to allow Flaubert the right to respond to his critics, so imagines Flaubert’s voice in all of his responses. This further muddies the lines between the character of Geoffrey and the character of Flaubert (as presented through the lens of Geoffrey Braithwaite).

“You are chosen; you are elected into love by a secret ballot against which there is no appeal.”

The chapter from the perspective of Louise Collet is one of the most important in the book. The inclusion of such a detailed alternative perspective allows the audience to view Flaubert from an entirely different point of view.

While the notion of Gustave Flaubert as an eccentric genius might have been extinguished already in the novel, Louise’s point of view helps to wholly ground Flaubert’s celebrity. He comes across as insecure, amateurish, self-centered, and immature. Nevertheless, Louise confesses that she did indeed love the man. This begs the question of why she might be drawn to such a figure and—as is the case throughout the book—reality is far more complex and nuanced. She is drawn to Flaubert, “elected into love by a secret ballot” (129), which seems to be an attempt by Louise to divorce herself of her own agency. She knows Flaubert is not a lovable man but loves him anyway. She has no trouble admitting that he is a genius and noting that he makes grand romantic gestures toward her. But he treats her terribly and is incredibly misinformed on a number of topics. However, rather than making Flaubert look bad or Louise look foolish, the chapter serves to make both characters seem more human. They are both flawed, damaged people, drawn together because they make one another feel better. Louise wants to remove her agency because she believes herself a sensible, reasonable woman. Yet, in matters of love, she is all the more human for having loved Flaubert.

“I argued, I fought, but he wanted to believe that happiness was impossible; it gave him some strange consolation.”

The manner in which Louise’s story is structured plays into the novel’s theme of objective truth. Geoffrey’s interpretation of Louise’s perspective informs the audience about Geoffrey as well as about Flaubert’s romantic relationships. In the context of the wider novel, it is possible to read Louise’s perspective as an extension of Ellen Braithwaite. If Geoffrey imagines himself as Flaubert, then Ellen’s character is certainly influenced by Louise. But the nature of the two relationships seems different. Louise and Flaubert are dramatic, keen to express the emotions that Geoffrey assumes must have roiled between the two. On the other hand, Geoffrey’s relationship with Ellen appears quieter and more reserved. The obvious point of difference—one Geoffrey himself stresses—is the nationality of the characters. Geoffrey is an Englishman imagining a French romance, projecting onto the relationship his latent belief about the differences between the two nations. Alternatively, and in a more metaphorical sense, the accusations Louise levels at Flaubert are subconscious assumptions Geoffrey makes about his own guilt. He feels that he is emotionally unavailable and difficult to love, though never explicitly states it. He feels empathy toward Flaubert because he sees so much of himself in the French writer. Thus, his exploration and supposition of what Louise may have felt becomes an exploration and a supposition of how Ellen may have felt.

“Flaubert left Europe a Romantic, and returned from the Orient a Realist”

The chapter titled “Braithwaite’s Dictionary of Accepted Ideas” uses form to address the central themes of the novel. Over the course of the text, it becomes clear that the search for objective truth is meaningless. The truth portrayed in biographies is as much to do with the author, the format, and the form of the biography as it is the subject. The book seeks to prove this by exploring Flaubert’s life through a number of different forms. As well as the dictionary, there are chapters taken from alternate perspectives, a chapter directly addressing criticism, and a chapter written in the style of an examination paper. Each gives a different biographical perspective on both Flaubert and Geoffrey.

In the above quote, Geoffrey records commonly received information about Flaubert’s life as entries in a fictional diary. With so many topics to cover, he moves swiftly past landmark events in Flaubert’s life. For example, under the dictionary definition of “Orient,” the audience gets a sentence-long quote about how much the trip to the Middle East changed Flaubert. It provides no evidence of how it changed him, why it changed him, or any samples of what Flaubert produced afterward. Instead, there is a simple and concise quote. The format teaches nothing, the novel suggests, though the audience’s pre-existing awareness of Flaubert’s trip to the Middle East (as mentioned in the rest of the book) helps the audience to realize how little is conveyed in the diary entries. It is an example of dramatic irony intersecting with literary form: the audience is aware of how flawed the form is in biographical terms because of what they have already learned about the characters.

“Part of love is preparing for death.”

An entire chapter is dedicated to the description of Ellen’s death. Geoffrey points out earlier in the novel that he will only tell the story when it is exactly right. In that sense, he is still “preparing for death” (149) and still struggling to come to terms with the facts of his wife’s passing. Even the prose itself becomes scrappier, more hesitant and stilting. The carefully crafted sentences fall away, replaced by direct addresses and a more confessional, worried tone. Geoffrey has not just been preparing for the death of Ellen; he has been preparing to tell the story of her death.

“Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.”

This quote might seem to reference Geoffrey’s struggle to make sense of Flaubert’s life through books. However, the book teaches little about Flaubert beyond the complexity of the author’s character. Instead, it imparts a huge amount about Geoffrey. The slow reveal of facts about his life and his obsession about Flaubert tell us far more about Geoffrey. While the above quote is true, it is not true in the most obvious sense. The audience has learned plenty about Geoffrey, though perhaps not a great deal about themselves.

“I speak as a doctor.”

Though Geoffrey is an educated and well-spoken man, he is often struck by self-doubt. For the most part, this occurs when he is discussing Flaubert in an academic sense. The audience has already seen how well he knows the subject of the writer’s life, but his work is not necessarily capable of shaping the discourse of Flaubert academia. Geoffrey is a keen amateur, rather than a researcher or an academic. Thus, he worries that his work will not be taken seriously. Because of this, he seeks to reassure his audience in matters in which he could be considered an expert. When discussing Flaubert’s possible suicide, for example, he treats the incident from a medical perspective and uses his authority as a doctor to assure the audience that it cannot possibly be true. Speaking “as a doctor” (167), Geoffrey reveals his slight insecurities and how he hopes to address his lack of standing in the academic world.

“I lay in bed on my back with the lights out and thought about Flaubert’s parrot: to Félicité, it was a grotesque but logical version of the Holy Ghost; to me, a fluttering, elusive emblem of the writer’s voice.”

This example demonstrates the difference made by perspective. Flaubert’s parrot has different meanings, different personalities, and represents different things depending on the context and—more importantly—who is looking at it. To Flaubert it was an oddity interesting enough to include in his book; for Félicité it was a divine figure; and for Geoffrey, it represented an intellectual curiosity that allowed him to exorcise the ghosts of his wife’s suicide. The parrot provided him with a sense of purpose, an objective in a life that seemed to be drifting. From Geoffrey’s perspective, the titular Flaubert’s parrot provides his life a renewed meaning.