Consider the various knickknacks and mementos Félicité accumulates. What is the symbolic significance of these objects individually? Collectively?

In what ways does the story portray the working-class relationship to social institutions in 19th-century France?

Félicité knows little of the world beyond the French countryside. Do the other characters know more? In what ways does the wider world feature in the novella’s largely rural setting, and what is the significance of this?