Writing is a process that involves how each person writes and reacts to different situations. This different way of writing and ideas about different topics make writing be different depending on the person who wrote it. Those differences that people have are eventually their style of writing. The style of any writer is basically how he likes to state his points and how he says things that can be said in many different ways. We have seen in class some short stories of William Carlos Williams and I have seen that he uses similar techniques to write his pieces. The main two things that characterize his writings are his use of the structure of the paragraphs to show something that is being said in the poem and his different uses of punctuation to show the speed and the emotions of his story. In Gustave Flaubert's A Simple Soul I saw things that can be similar or different to Williams' way of writing. Flaubert uses lists to describe the setting of the story and also to show what Felicite had to do. Williams also used list to show the settings but he also used lists to show confusion by describing in very much detail what the features of each setting were. Flaubert doesn't use different punctuations with the intention to show the reader the rhythm in which that paragraph has to be read. Williams in the other hand hardly writes a paragraph where the variation in punctuation is not used to show the rhythm and to show what is happening to the characters in the story. For example Williams did not use a period in a story that was about a chain of blind men falling into a bog in that way the reader reads the story as if he was quickly falling to the end of the story waiting for the point. I think Flaubert in a way does this to his writing by not changing the variation in sentences to show sometimes the boredom in the lives of Felicite and Madame Aubain after Victor, Virginia, and Paul are away from home. Another thing that really caught my attention of Flaubert was that in one chapter he talks about a woman for some part of the chapter without telling us who she is. According to Flaubert : "She would not believe him at first […] To Felicite his cowardice appeared a proof of his love for her, and her devotion to him grew stronger" (Chapter 2). His style keeps in this specific part the reader's attention because he really wants to know who is that person but is not told until later.
There was another thing that Flaubert did in his story that I noticed. He narrates most of the story in third person in except for a few pieces of dialogue. The few pieces of dialogue that are written are said by the different characters but in different ratios. Flaubert's style shows since the beginning that Madame Aubain has certain importance. She is the one that in the first three chapters most talks in dialogue. I see this as the way in which Flaubert shows us the importance and the prestige that each character had in the story. Madame Aubain says in one part "Now, be brave, be brave"
(chapter 3), and talks in dialogue other couple times. Felicite does not talk in dialogue for almost three chapters until in the end of chapter three she has a dialogue. Flaubert with the dialogue usage may have wanted to show the importance of the different characters throughout the story.
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