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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is piled on the piano?
(a) Packets and cardboard boxes.
(b) China plates.
(c) Novels.
(d) Music scores.

2. What cure does the doctor recommend for Virginie's nervous complaint?
(a) Sea bathing.
(b) Laudanum.
(c) Bleeding.
(d) Water and gruel.

3. Why does the family move back home?
(a) Virginie's cough resumed.
(b) Mme. Aubain missed her house.
(c) Félicité had to return to tend to seasonal work.
(d) Paul needed to prepare to leave for school.

4. Where does Félicité sleep?
(a) On the sofa.
(b) In her arm chair.
(c) Outside.
(d) In her room.

5. Who does Félicité hear Liebard talk about from her past?
(a) The farmer she worked for as a girl.
(b) Her mother.
(c) Her sister.
(d) Madame Lehoussais.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is Trouville situated in the landscape?

2. Why does Mme. Aubain have to sell the majority of her properties?

3. Who reads to Félicité for the first time in her life?

4. What is Félicité's relationship to Mme. Aubain?

5. How does Paul make the journey to Tocqueville?

Short Essay Questions

1. At the beginning of the story, what does the narrator tell us about Mme. Aubain's history?

2. How does Mme. Aubain respond to Félicité's reunion with her lost sister?

3. Why do you think Félicité is hurt by people's jokes about Loulou?

4. To what extent would you say that this story is about Félicité? What do you think Flaubert wanted to say by writing a short story about a person like Félicité?

5. Do you think that Félicité's final vision is religious or delusional? Does it matter?

6. Why do you think Félicité's reaction to Virginie's first communion is so much more powerful than her reaction to her own first communion?

7. Does it seem surprising that Félicité's voice is shrill? Why do you think this detail is included in her description?

8. Why do you think Félicité never talks about how worried she feels for Victor?

9. What do we learn about Félicité through her relationship with Theodore?

10. How does the narrator describe the woman to whom Paul is engaged?

(see the answer keys)

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