View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How is Félicité's stance described?

2. What does Virginie wear to bathe?

3. What was the most exciting part of the day in Trouville?

4. Where is Trouville situated in the landscape?

5. What new activity do Félicité and Virginie begin at Christmas time?

Short Essay Questions

1. What do you think Félicité means when she says of Victor's death that "'It doesn't matter a bit, not to them it doesn't'"?

2. How does Félicité feel about Loulou before she begins to go deaf? How do you know?

3. Why do you think Mme. Aubain shakes slightly when she sees Félicité respond to the news of her nephew's death?

4. Do you think it's significant that Félicité misses Virginie's death because she goes back to lock up in case of thieves?

5. How is Félicité introduced to the reader in the first chapter?

6. Think back on the story as a whole. What do you think is the major theme and why?

7. How does Flaubert choose to describe the procession of Corpus Christi and Félicité's death? What affect does this have?

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

9. Why do you think the narrator conceals the real cause of Loulou's death?

10. How do Mme. Aubain and Félicité's reactions to Virginie's departure differ from each other?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the relationship between Félicité and Mme. Aubain. The culminating event in their relationship is, of course, the moment of embrace and equality, but several other things happen between them that helps to place each of them in a certain relationship to the world around them. Write an essay that considers the way that Félicité and Mme. Aubain's relationship helps to ground each of them in a clear relationship to their world. Some details you might want to look at are Mme. Aubain's treatment of Félicité's actual family and Félicité's sense that it was wrong for Mme. Aubain to die before she did.

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast Virginie and Victor. Félicité considers them to share the same place in her heart. What similarities of character and situation contribute to this sense for the reader? What differences distinguish them?

Essay Topic 3

Describe and analyze Félicité's relationship to religion and the divine. You might consider in particular the ways in which she seeks to draw literal relationships between descriptions and stories of God, or the divine and her literal earthly world. Be sure to cite specific examples from the text to support your argument.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,520 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample