Flaubert's Parrot

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Character Analysis

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Character Analysis

Geoffrey Braithwaite

Geoffrey Braithwaite is the narrator and protagonist of Flaubert’s Parrot. Though he claims to be researching Flaubert’s life, Geoffrey’s story eventually becomes the center of the narrative. The suicide of his wife and his distant relationship with his children draws Geoffrey increasingly closer to Flaubert. Flaubert is no longer just a hobby for Geoffrey, but one of the few meaningful relationships he has left in his life. Thus, the search for an objective truth is not simply the search to learn more about Flaubert. Geoffrey also hopes to learn more about himself in the process, attempting to find the objective truth about his own life and rid himself of guilt following his wife’s suicide.

Geoffrey’s role as the protagonist means that he guides the reader through two distinct worlds. There is the world of his own life and biography, which is slowly drip-fed to the reader. At times this information is even purposefully withheld, such as when Geoffrey admits that he is not ready to tell his wife’s story. There is also the world of Flaubert’s biography, a subject with which Geoffrey’s own life is deeply entangled. He guides the audience through the various details and complications of Flaubert’s life but uses these details to illustrate parts of his own biography. For example, when he discusses Flaubert’s relationship with women and theories of marriage, he begins to discuss the complicated relationship he had with his own wife and—in particular—her infidelity. By this point in the novel, it is clear that the relationship between Ellen and Geoffrey was never imbued with the raging passion described by Flaubert in letters and books, but the descriptions given by Flaubert give the audience (and Geoffrey himself) a type of relationship against which it can be compared and contrasted. The juxtaposition between Flaubert and Geoffrey’s life teaches the reader more about Geoffrey than Geoffrey intends.

Though the novel is concerned with trying to refine and elucidate identities, Geoffrey’s own identity is a complicated matter. He does not introduce himself formally until several chapters have passed. At one point, he makes a concerted effort to fill in the details of his existence. He provides his height, eye color, and a few other vague details about his appearance, describing himself as “six foot one; grey hair; good health” (87). But the key to Geoffrey’s identity does not lie in these details. As he explains in his discussions of Flaubert’s mistaken description of Emma Bovary’s eyes, such details are relatively minor in comparison to the grander appreciation of character conveyed through the text as a whole. The audience is left with a much more vivid description of Geoffrey Braithwaite as told through his search for information about his favorite author’s stuffed parrot. The search might seem inconsequential, but it tells the audience that Geoffrey is a lonely man on a quest for personal meaning. He treasures the writings of a dead French writer over his relationships with his family, a fact which he himself remarks upon several times. Geoffrey is self-aware and alone, seeking to convey his character to the audience through his search for inconsequential details about the life of Gustave Flaubert. This determined search teaches us more than the color of his eyes or the cut of his suit ever could.

However, there is one biographical detail which Geoffrey does return to on a number of occasions. He explicitly states several times that he speaks “as a doctor” (167). The fact that Geoffrey is a doctor is of little concern to the audience. Rather, it is important that Geoffrey wants his audience to know that he is a doctor. He hopes that this gives his words an added weight and authority. We know that Geoffrey is not an academic or a scholar. He is a hobbyist, someone who researches Flaubert in his spare time. He wants to be taken seriously, even though his thoughts and ideas about Flaubert might not be taken seriously in academic circles. When it comes to matters such as Flaubert’s possible suicide, he could not be more dismissive of claims that the writer killed himself. Speaking “as a doctor” (167), he hopes that he can elevate his opinion into the realm of the important. When he is given a chance to potentially write about a huge discovery—the letters discovered by Ed—he quickly loses this opportunity. His excitement in this moment informs the audience of just how desperate Geoffrey is to be taken seriously. He has little chance of being acknowledged by academics if he does not have a truly revelatory discovery to write about. Geoffrey identifies himself as a doctor because he hopes it will lend credence to his words. Instead, it reveals his insecurities that his quest for the truth about Flaubert will be ultimately meaningless.

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert is a celebrated French writer and historical figure who died in 1880. Released in 1984, Flaubert’s Parrot features the writer, as a character, in an important role nearly a century after his death. The novel revolves around the life and work of Flaubert. Geoffrey Braithwaite, a huge fan of Flaubert’s, conveys incidents, anecdotes, and stories from the author’s life. The novel features numerous direct quotes from Flaubert’s work, as well as the work of other contemporary writers and Flaubert’s biographers. Geoffrey sees Flaubert as a character rather than a plot device, as he seeks to uncover the author’s true nature.

Geoffrey feels he shares a direct bond with Flaubert. He has read all of Flaubert’s letters, biographies, and writings in which contemporaries (such as Du Camp) provide insight into Flaubert’s character. Geoffrey visits Flaubert’s hometown and various places of importance in the French writer’s life. When Geoffrey travels to Rouen, for instance, the reader learns about how the town featured in Flaubert’s life. When Geoffrey is eating certain foods or drinking certain beverages, the audience learns Flaubert’s tastes and opinions about such items. When Geoffrey is thinking about his wife’s suicide, he cannot help but recall accusations that Flaubert killed himself. Thus, Flaubert “lives” alongside Geoffrey wherever he goes, functioning as a ghost or invisible friend.

While Flaubert is initially elevated above all writers and praised highly, he quickly becomes a more complicated figure in the novel. In particular, the chapter narrated from Louise’s perspective reveals how he “humiliated” (136) her on a regular basis, part of a pathological mistreatment of women endemic to his character. These negative qualities eventually color the audience’s opinion of the writer. Louise also reveals many of Flaubert’s strange behaviors and the specific ignorance he held toward certain subjects. She points out that he knew nothing about the language of flowers. For a writer so closely associated with a floral, aesthetically pleasing prose style, this seems like a calculated insult. The comment reveals the depths of the love and hate Louise shared with Flaubert—and casts doubt on the grandiose, masterful perception of Flaubert established early in the novel. In the end, there are cracks and flaws in Flaubert’s image, just as there are in the three statues Geoffrey visits at the book’s conclusion.

The central argument of the novel suggests that the audience will never truly understand Flaubert as a character. Like every other biographer, Geoffrey has carefully selected which facts, quotes, and truths to reveal. He controls the insight into the character. Even direct quotes from Flaubert—where the reader can hear the author’s voice—are editorialized. Therefore, the character of Flaubert is not a true facsimile of the writer. Instead, the character represents Geoffrey Braithwaite’s perception of Flaubert—and thus plays a key role in understanding Geoffrey Braithwaite and the underlying message of Flaubert’s Parrot.

Ellen Braithwaite

Ellen Braithwaite is the former wife of Geoffrey Braithwaite. She was “born in 1920, married in 1940, gave birth in 1942 and 1946, died in 1975” (151). The audience is aware that Ellen is already dead when Geoffrey begins narrating his story, as he describes himself as a widower. But Geoffrey keeps the exact circumstances of her death deliberately vague. Later, he reveals that Ellen was a serial adulterer. Though Geoffrey never states with whom Ellen conducted her affairs, he makes it apparent that her betrayal was not an isolated instance.

Ellen attempts suicide by taking a very specific dose of drugs. At the hospital, she is placed on life support. Geoffrey, as a doctor, knows that she will not make it. He is the one who turns off the life support machine, retracting his earlier claim that he “didn’t kill my wife” (88). He may not have murdered her, but he was certainly the man who decided to euthanize her. By providing context around her death, he changes the perceived action of killing his wife, making it an act of mercy rather than a crime of passion.

Geoffrey retains a latent affection for Ellen. Despite her infidelity, he claims to have loved her throughout her life. She seems not to have been particularly skilled about hiding her affairs, but he willingly turned a blind eye. He admits that “at first I was hurt” (152), but this feeling slips away. They were “happy enough” (154), he admits; the two enjoyed a comfortable life which they were not eager to disrupt. They “never talked about her secret life” (154), though Geoffrey knew it was occurring. By the end, their love seems to have been entirely platonic and unromantic. As a doctor, Geoffrey seems to view Ellen more as a patient than a wife; she has ailments and symptoms, but he is unable to link these to his own flaws or his own actions. He is able to note that he is more concerned with a dead French writer than he is with his own wife, but seems to view this through a darkly humorous lens rather than an explanatory one. He knows that he understood Ellen “less well than a foreign writer dead for a hundred years” (157), but laments that life is where things are not explained to the reader as they are in books.

Ellen is much like Flaubert. They are both the central figures in Geoffrey’s life, even though they died a century apart. They are less characters in their own right than they are reflections of Geoffrey. Simply by existing in opposition and conjunction with Geoffrey, Ellen and Flaubert become illuminating characters. Geoffrey may have technically killed his wife, but she breathes life into his character by living on in his memory.