Compare the characters of Iona in Chekhov's Misery and Félicité in Flaubert's A Simple Heart.

Iona is a gried stricken father, who has lost his son. He is filled with despair and loneliness, and desperate to share his feelings. As a father, Iona feels as if he should be the one to have lost his life, but he finds himself unable to express his feelings in words.

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Félicité is Madame Aubain's faithful servant. She is a woman of simple mind and simple heart, a believer in the supernatural, clean living, and hard work. Orphaned early in her life, she is a cow-herder and dairy girl until a broken heart compels her to leave and seek work in a nearby town, Pont-l'Évêque. Thus, at eighteen, she is hired by Madame Aubain as a cook and housemaid. She soon takes over the running of the household while forming a succession of deep emotional attachments to Madame and her two children, to her own nephew, and ultimately to her parrot, Loulou. When the parrot dies, she has it stuffed and keeps it in her room.

Although Félicité's devotion is almost never reciprocated or appreciated, her need to love never flags. Despite a life of hard work, repeated disappointment, and the gradual loss of everyone dear to her, she is unwavering in her faith. As she grows older, she begins to confuse the stuffed parrot with images of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove that she sees in religious paintings and stained-glass windows. As she lies dying of pneumonia, she has a vision of the heavens opening and the Holy Ghost descending upon her in the form of a giant parrot, and she dies smiling.