Last Twilight in Paris

Helaine is the novel’s dynamic deuteragonist. As a child and a young woman, she is confined to her parents’ Parisian townhouse, an admittedly beautiful and elegant residence which she nonetheless compares to a “gilded cage.” Her loss of childhood and freedom includes her relationship with her grandmother, who she is no longer allowed to visit after the influenza weakens her body’s immunity and who dies when Helaine is nine. Helaine begins the novel believing that she is weak, the consequence of being sheltered for so long, too feeble even to sustain an easy walking pace for more than a few minutes. On her first outing from her home in 13 years, she realizes that she must keep going or return and submit to being a “prisoner” forever.

This important decision—to keep walking—helps to refocus what would be the remainder of Helaine’s life. Instead of being condemned to a life consisting of parental surveillance, dreams of adventure, and window scenes, Helaine chooses music, the streets of Paris, and romantic love. She even learns, eventually, that she is not incapable of becoming pregnant, as her mother told her: She gets pregnant while confined at Lévitan and learns of the pregnancy after the Allies liberate Paris from German occupation. 

When she chooses freedom and love over limitation and protection, opting to marry Gabriel instead of remaining in her mother’s stifling care, she opens up a new world of possibility—some beautiful and some horrible—and learns the significance of having The Freedom to Control One’s Narrative. She, quite literally, writes stories that she hopes to live out one day and then realizes the possibility and potential to do so. Her decision to retain her maiden name, and for Gabriel to adopt it for himself, highlight The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity by demonstrating one way to resolve the tension between the two: By honoring the past while moving beyond it. 

Helaine continues to be affected by The Enduring Effects of Trauma and Loss, which make her suspicious of the Allies’ displaced persons camp and even cause her to answer her door with suspicion some 10 years after the war’s end. However, the novel ends on a hopeful note, with Helaine and Gabriel raising their daughter together, and Helaine considering writing her own story at last.

Ian Shipley is Louise’s mentor at the Red Cross during the war. It initially seems like Ian’s involvement in the Red Cross’s war effort will contribute to highlighting The Moral Complexities of Resistance, but the revelation of his treason and war crimes at the novel’s end exposes him as someone who never truly believed in the causes he claimed to support. When Louise meets him at the Red Cross center in London, she believes that he is committed to his principles so strongly that he is willing to risk his life to help the POWs imprisoned in the Nazis’ inhumane camps. He is committed to his principles, though it turns out those principles are dramatically different from the ones Louise believes him to hold. 

When Louise eventually identifies him in the film Gabriel attempted to smuggle out of the camp, he tells her, “He was using the cover of the Red Cross to provide classified documents to the Germans […]. And also to feed false information from the Germans back to the Brits” (312). Not only is Ian responsible for potential delays and errors in British intelligence, but his work on behalf of the Germans may have led to additional deaths of Jews and/or POWs. Furthermore, he is obviously responsible for Franny’s death.

Ian’s treason also affects Louise and Gabriel’s feelings about the past. When Gabriel learns of the circumstances surrounding his sister’s death, he weeps and says that he “never meant to put her in harm’s way” (313), and Louise realizes that he shares the guilt she feels regarding Franny’s death. Had Gabriel never involved Franny in his risky resistance mission, she would not have been killed, and had Louise consented to help her when she asked, Franny would not have gone to Ian—a move that let him know that she could pass information dangerous to both the German war effort and himself. 

Though their “guilt” is indirect, as neither is truly responsible for Franny’s killing, when Louise learns of Ian’s arrest and imminent trial, she says, “‘It’s over.’ I exhale with relief. Except that it will never really be over” (323). The effects of her sense of loss cannot be fully mitigated, even if Ian is brought to justice.

Gabriel is Helaine’s husband and the father of her daughter. He is acutely aware of The Transformation of Civilian Spaces into Sites of Oppression, long before Helaine acknowledges the shift. Upon one of their earliest meetings, he asks her if her family has considered leaving France for their own safety, a question that surprises her because it seems so unnecessary and extreme. While she cannot imagine any part of the persecution that follows France’s declaration of war on Germany, Gabriel senses and fears it long before it happens. He is deeply committed to his principles and to his wife, even adopting the appearance of collaborating with the Germans to barter for her protection in his absence. 

He tries to enlist in the French army, but his application is declined due to his leg. He quits the National Orchestre when Helaine is banished from his performances because she is a Jew, and he only returns to work so that they have some means of subsistence via his income; this choice directly demonstrates The Moral Complexities of Resistance. Although he would prefer to completely sever ties with an organization that condones the persecution of Jews, he knows that his salary is necessary for his and Helaine’s survival.

Gabriel is a static character, one who supports Helaine’s talents and dreams as a young woman and continues to do so as they age. He never treats her as a victim, as someone weak or inferior—either due to her sex or her religion—instead, he routinely empowers her, presenting her with a choice to remain with her parents or marry him, and even taking her last name in an era where a man doing so is virtually unheard of. He is willing to change his name to honor the Weils—a family who never treated him with honor or respect—out of love for his wife, even giving up the possible continuation of his own family’s surname. His devotion to what is right, whether it’s a commitment to equality, freedom, or love, never wavers.