The Parrot and the Braid

Abstract

I begin by articulating a basis for comparison between Flaubert's “Un cœur simple” (1877) and Rodenbach's Bruges‐la‐morte (1891), identifying a set of five close structural parallels between their final chapters. Given these parallels, why do the two narratives end so differently, with a quiet death in the Flaubert and a violent one in the Rodenbach? Donald Winnicott's theory of transitional objects enables an answer to this question. Flaubert's protagonist has a successful transitional object, the parrot Loulou, where Rodenbach's has a failed object in the form of his dead wife's golden braid, and the roles of these two objects help to explain the two works’ conclusions.A transitional object reading further allows comparison of the texts’ representation of religion, both the private shrines of the characters and the public processions of their communities. The distinction between successful and failed transitional objects is tied to the public/private opposition. Félicité, in “Un cœur simple,” and Hugues, in Bruges‐la‐morte, differ from each other in their respective attachments to public and private life, notably in the religious sphere. The same opposition may, I suggest, be connected to the difference between motivated and unmotivated metaphors articulated in conceptual metaphor theory.