Flaubert's Parrot

This chapter recalls Ellen’s death, described by Geoffrey as a “pure story” (149). He states that “part of love is preparing for death” (149), as doing so validates the relationship. And after death comes madness and loneliness: “mourning is full of time; nothing but time” (149). Geoffrey tries drinking and working but is left with too much time. He finds “the language of bereavement foolishly inadequate” (150).

Geoffrey compares his mourning to incidents from Flaubert’s life, such as the death of Flaubert’s mother. He describes her personality, starting over a number of times. Geoffrey recalls sitting in a village pub and overhearing a dirty joke about a woman named Betty Corrinder; he blushes on his wife’s behalf. Ellen cheated on Geoffrey but he insists that “she wasn’t corrupted; her spirit didn’t coarsen” (152) and she only ever lied to Geoffrey about “her secret life” (152). He describes their marriage as “happy enough” (154). When discussing her affairs, he has to “fictionalise a little” (154) because they never actually talked about the matter. He compares her adultery with his “devotion to a dead foreigner” (154), something of a hobby.

The one thing which has improved in the modern age, Geoffrey says, is death, particularly compared to “all those nineteenth-century deaths” (156).