A Who or a What?
The story opens with an introduction to its protagonist, Felicite. The imagery used to describe her, however, raises the question: is Felicite a who or is she really (with the emphasis on useful labor) closer to being a what?
“For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite.
For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress—although the latter was by no means an agreeable person.”
A What
The imagery of those opening lines of the story raise that question of the fundamental nature of Felicite’s metaphysical substance. Be she human or be she something less? The final line of the first “chapter” of this short story appears to provide an answer:
“Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working automatically.”
Religion
Some scholars have interpreted the story as a critique of Christianity, specifically an indictment of mindless devotion to rite and ritual of Catholicism. Felicite’s embrace of the Church is forwarded through imagery which is punctuated by a stark assertion explicitly underlining the implicit criticism:
“Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of this she developed a great respect for the Almighty and a great fear of His wrath...Why had they crucified Him who loved little children, nourished the people, made the blind see, and who, out of humility, had wished to be born among the poor, in a stable? The sowings, the harvests, the wine-presses, all those familiar things which the Scriptures mention…As for the dogma, she could not understand it and did not even try.”
The Parrot
The original title of the story was “The Parrot” and, indeed, aside from its protagonist, the most significant character in the story is Loulou the bird. The true significance of the bird (thematically speaking) will not be full realized until the final paragraph, but that meaning is foreshadowed and signified through imagery connecting the bird to Felicite’s rather confused understanding of the concept of the Holy Ghost in Catholic doctrine (not that she is alone in this confusion).
“she always gazed at the Holy Ghost, and noticed that there was something about it that resembled a parrot. The likenesses appeared even more striking on a colored picture by Espinal, representing the baptism of our Savior. With his scarlet wings and emerald body, it was really the image of Loulou...They associated in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified through the neighborhood of the Holy Ghost”
