The Marriage Of Opposites

“My father had told me that no matter how comfortable we might feel, we must live like fish, unattached to any land. Wherever there was water, we would survive. Some fish could stay in the mud for months, even years, and when at last there was a high flooding tide, they would swim away, a dark flash, remembered only by their own kind. So perhaps the stories they told of our people were true: no net could hold us.”

Rachel’s father tells her that the Jewish people must always be ready to move. Rachel’s Jewish ancestors faced generations of persecution—no matter where they moved—because of their Jewish faith. This cycle repeated itself until Rachel’s parents moved to St. Thomas, an island the Danish King declared safe for people of the Jewish faith. However, even though the Jewish community on St. Thomas is strong and vibrant, Rachel’s father points out that things can change quickly, and they must be ready to find safety elsewhere if necessary.

“I could hear moths fluttering, many as big as birds, as they struck against the shutters of my room, called to the yellow light of the candle on my table. They could not get in. Whether they were spirits, I did not know. I wondered if all creatures were drawn to what was dangerous or if we merely wanted light at any cost and were willing to burn for our desires.”

Rachel reveals her belief in the spirit world. While her parents raise her in the Jewish faith, many people on the island practice a Spiritualism that has its roots in various African religions. Adelle believes Rachel has the gift of contacting deceased spirits, and her beliefs have become Rachel’s. But what’s also important to this moment is what Rachel contemplates while watching the moths. Her thoughts foreshadow what she will experience when she falls in love with Frédéric. Like the moths, she will be willing to burn her ties with the Jewish community to follow her desire.

“Although I didn’t love him, I respected him, and surely that counted for something. Another woman would have thought him a considerate lover, but I had been inflamed by the stories I’d read and the passions of Solomon, and I wanted more.”

Rachel contemplates her feelings for Isaac. She doesn’t go into the arranged marriage expecting to give or receive love; instead, she sees the relationship as a business arrangement that helps her father. While she never falls in love with Isaac, he is a kind man and she loves his children. It’s only after Isaac dies and she finds Frédéric that Rachel realizes the true meaning of love. With Frédéric, she finally finds the passion and desire that Solomon had talked about.

“When I walked home a pelican followed above me. Maybe it was the bird Adelle had become, a spirit now freed. I closed my eyes and wished that she would appear in her earthly form and instruct me as she had throughout my life. I was the one who did not love my husband. I was embarrassed because he was a good man. I had whispered a single question to Adelle before she passed on. What is life without love? That was when she took my hand in her own, though she was as frail and weightless as a bird. She made a circle within my palm. I knew what she was telling me. A life like that was worth nothing at all.”

This moment comes immediately after Adelle’s death. Rachel and her mother have just gotten in a fight, which makes Rachel miss Adelle all the more because she thinks of her as more of a mother than friend—the two shared an intimacy that Rachel never felt with her own mother. Here, Rachel reveals how much of an influence Adelle has had on her. Adelle gave her advice about life and love that stay with Rachel her whole life. This moment also shows Rachel’s belief in spirits. Throughout the novel, winged creatures, especially birds, symbolize the spirits of the deceased. 

“I wondered if he cried out for me, or if he had called to Esther, his beloved first wife. I hope she was standing there waiting for him, her arms outstretched to hold him, and that his spirit lifted itself out of his body with joy. On the night my husband died I came home from the office alone with his spectacles and his watch. I got into our bed and waited for the spirit of the first Madame Petit to lie down beside me and mourn with me, but she was gone. She had been there for only one reason, to watch over her husband. Now he belonged to her in the world beyond ours.”

This moment comes right after Isaac’s death. One of the first things Rachel thinks about is Isaac’s first wife, Esther. This is an important detail because, throughout the novel, Rachel feels a strong bond with this woman whom she never knew because Rachel has a sense that she is living the life that should have been Esther’s. When Rachel first marries Isaac, she knows that he will never love her because he had loved his first wife too much; this is okay for her, though, because she doesn’t love him either. When Rachel is in labor with her first child, she cries out for the spirit of Isaac’s first wife to watch over her. Ever since that moment, she credits her life to Esther’s help. Even in old age, Rachel visits Esther’s grave to show her gratitude.

“I suppose this is what love can do to a woman, bring her into a garden at night, convinced she can somehow affect fate’s plan with her desire. Love like this was a mystery to me. I didn’t understand how people allowed sheer emotion to get the better of them. You couldn’t see love, or touch it, or taste it, yet it could destroy you and leave you in the dark, chasing after your own destiny.”

Rosalie says this after telling Rachel about her love for Mr. Enrique. Rachel can’t understand it because she hasn’t yet felt this overwhelming emotion. However, Rosalie’s insights into what love can motivate a person to do foreshadow what will happen for Rachel once she falls in love with Frédéric: That love will cause her to be outcast from her community. After this moment, Rachel sees examples of how love wreaks havoc on the lives of the people she loves: Jestine’s love for Aaron ruins her life, Camille’s love of painting and Julie ostracizes him from his Jewish roots, and her father and mother’s relationship was ruined because he loved their maid.

“He could not keep his eyes off her. He wondered if it had been her bed that he’d slept in, in the big house, and if the dream he’d had had been hers. He had despised rain when he was in France, but now he longed for that rainy dream, for the bed that might be hers, the pillows that were so deep, the open window and the yellow morning light and the cool, green dream they had shared.”

Frédéric begins to admit the feelings he has for Rachel. More importantly, though, he mentions their shared dream. When he first comes to the island and stays in her old house, he unexpectedly dreams of the cool wetness of France. He feels that his dream is strange because while he was living in France he despised the constant rain. It soon becomes clear that he is actually dreaming Rachel’s perennial dream, and that the two have a special bond that enables them to share even their dreams at night. 

“She was seven years older than he, and had lived a lifetime in those seven years. She had been a married woman, a widow, a mother, and he was nothing more than a young man who was good at numbers. Once, after leaving, he stopped on the street and glanced into the window. He saw her unpin her black hair. He stood there even though he knew she would remove her dress. It was as if his imagining had been willed into being and he couldn’t turn away. Those next few moments when she stepped out of her clothes undid him. He could not look away.”

This is the first time Frédéric realizes his attraction to Rachel. Although he feels guilty for watching her undress, he can’t help himself. He is drawn to her despite the fact that she is older, widowed, and has multiple children, and even though the Jewish community looks at their potential relationship as a sin since they are related by marriage. His love for and attraction to Rachel go against social norms and logic, but they pursue each other anyway.

“She wound up in a nameless longing, and she blamed him for her raw emotions. His presence was like a spell, his name an incantation. She had been avoiding him, but that tactic hadn’t worked. She hadn’t been to the cemetery once since his arrival. She ignored her children when they cried. She locked herself in her chamber every night and stared into the mirror, wondering if she was old, and if there was a cure for aging, some leaf or herb she might ingest or apply to make him want her. She should have nothing to do with him, he was the enemy, the unwanted relative, but now it was too late. She knew too much about him, and everything he did took on a cast of intimacy.”

Rachel recognizes the irresistible longing she feels for Frédéric. She initially feels resentful of this attraction because she assumes that he had originally come to the island to take over what should have been hers. This juxtaposition between hate and love makes her feel confused, especially because she’s never loved a man before. Right after this moment, he kisses her for the first time, and suddenly all her negative feelings subside and everything suddenly makes sense. From that moment forward, she will do anything to maintain their relationship. 

“If I had locked myself away to wear mourning clothes for the rest of my life the members of the congregation would have certainly approved. Many would have preferred I give my baby to a family who couldn’t have a child of their own. Every door shut. When I walked through the marketplace the other women passed by, ignoring me. I was a cautionary tale, and young girls especially fled from me. I came to understand why the pirates’ wives had lived alone in the caves, not wanting even one another’s company. It was easier not to face judgment, especially from your own kind.”

Rachel explains the ramifications of her relationship with Frédéric. The community shuns them both; even worse, the community also shuns their newborn baby. While Rachel has always been at odds with society’s expectations of her, this is the first time her defiance of tradition has cost her so much. As a result, Rachel now empathizes with other women, such as the pirates’ wives who gave up everything in the name of love.

“Rosalie understood wanting what you could not have, as Mr. Enrique had a wife on another island and could not marry her. But I was not as patient or as tolerant as she was. The green bitterness growing inside me was a dangerous flower. I could taste the tang of sourness it gave off, like arsenic, the poison left out for the mongooses sent here from the other side of the world.”

Rachel describes her anger at being shunned by the Jewish community and denied the right to marry Frédéric. For much of her life, Rachel has struggled with feelings of “bitterness,” a trait she attributes to her mother, a woman Rachel was contemptuous of. While she feels her mother planted the seed of bitterness inside her, now Rachel is watering the “flower” of bitterness inside her by refuting expectations.

“I took Jacobo with me. He was nearly four, a quiet child who often refused to do as he was told. In truth, I still loved Jacobo more dearly than any of the others, though I hid the fact that I favored him. He was both clever and dreamy, interested in the adult world, which the other children ignored.”

During this moment, Rachel and Jacobo are on their way to leave food on the herb man’s doorstep, since he is now too old to care for himself. Rachel favors Jacobo more than her other children because he is so similar to her, for both are strong-willed and determined to achieve their desires no matter the cost. However, as Jacobo grows older, the similarities he shares with Rachel becomes a source of contention; for the very thing that Rachel considers a source of strength in herself, she finds to be an intolerable rebelliousness in Jacobo. 

“My family’s disagreement with the synagogue was the reason I attended the school with people of color, something so unusual most of the students couldn’t help but gape when my mother and Jestine enrolled us. Jestine was like an aunt to me, especially as we had no extended family on St. Thomas. Since I had few dealings with people of our own faith, I did not understand why the other students seemed so stunned by my arrival. My brothers were standoffish, embarrassed to be so different, but I was pleased. Jestine had told me this was the best school on the island and promised me I would find my calling here. Our teachers were religious, dedicated people whose goal was to bring education to the new world, and they were tolerant of race and religion in ways that astounded and refreshed me.”

Jacobo explains why he went to the Moravian school instead of the Jewish school. It was eye-opening to be in a place where the adults didn’t frown on intermingling with people outside the faith. For Jacobo, the Moravian school is a haven of diversity where he feels at home. Because the Jewish community has always ostracized his family, and because his family’s closest friends are people of color like Jestine and Rosalie, the Moravian school feels like an extension of his home life. His upbringing in the Moravian school provides a foundation that always stays with him.

“I wondered if whatever had happened in the synagogue was the seed of her bitterness. The shadows around her appeared green, lengthening along the mosaic floor as the hour grew later and the time for her to return to the congregation approached. For an instant I saw her as she must have been when she was young and unsure of herself. Her familiar features shifted and seemed vulnerable and unformed. I had the sense I was looking straight through time. Later I studied myself in a dim, silvered mirror. I didn’t like to think I resembled her, but our eyes were the same. Dark and filled with defiance.”

Jacobo and his family prepare to attend the synagogue services at the request of Madame Halevy. This is the first time Jacobo has seen his mother lack confidence, and she appears vulnerable and human. But he also notes her bitterness, a sentiment she has carried her whole life. Jacobo wonders if her bitterness stems from whatever happened with the congregation; in reality, the bitterness comes from her childhood feelings toward her mother. Note also that Rachel’s shadow is green; throughout the novel, green symbolizes Rachel’s bitterness.

“My mother would have disapproved of my being there at the ring, she would think the men barbaric. And yet Jestine had told me my own mother seemed to enjoy dispatching chickens when she was a girl. So there it was: my mother was a hypocrite and a stranger. She did one thing, but insisted I do the other. I realized that I hated her. This was not what I was supposed to feel and so I hated myself as well.”

Jacobo describes watching a chicken fight, an activity his mother would disparage. Although Jacobo and Rachel are obviously similar in many ways, Rachel often disapproves of the things Jacobo does even though she has done them herself. Here, Jacobo likes watching chicken fighting, and similarly, Rachel used to love to kill the chickens for dinner, so her censure would be highly hypocritical. Jacobo seems to be repeating a cycle started by Rachel and her mother, hating her for their similarities and nevertheless being unable to stop being like her.

“He would give himself two years, and then, if it was as bad as he imagined it would be, he would find a way to leave. He had that in his blood, a history of men who knew when to stay and when to run away, men who could tell when it was time to find another life and another land.”

Jacobo, now renamed Camille, is about to leave Paris to return to St. Thomas. He is aware he won’t be happy going back. Nevertheless, he gives himself two years to make the best of it. Importantly, in this moment he identifies with his Jewish ancestors who were used to packing up and leaving their home for a new land. While his Jewish ancestors were fleeing religious persecution, Camille dreams of leaving St. Thomas because of its bigotry. He believes the island is full of social injustice, with people of different races being treated as less than, and he wants to escape to a place that is more open-minded and socially just.

“He was tall and lanky and resembled his father in his younger days. Although he was not as handsome, he was compelling. He was quiet but arrogant, with a sort of fire that came from desire. Women looked at him, curious, wondering what made him so proud. There was something he wanted badly, anyone could see that. A yearning he didn’t speak of. He looked past the people around him. He was a shipping clerk, but he seemed to think he was something more.”

This passage describes Camille, recently returned from Paris and now a grown man. While Rachel’s true desire in life is Frédéric, Camille’s true desire is painting. Just as Rachel was willing to face ostracism to be with Frédéric, Camille is willing to face his parents’ disappointment and disapproval to pursue painting. The irony is that Rachel can’t see how her pursuit of Frédéric is similar to her son’s pursuit of art. 

“Camille understood that people often wanted to erase the pain of what they’d been through, to reinvent the past and their part in it. He’d seen this for himself in the Market Square on July 3, when the proclamation emancipating all slaves in the Danish West Indies was read. It was a joyously received, a long-overdue declaration brought about by the King’s governor, Peter von Scholten, who himself had a common-law wife who was a free woman of mixed blood. Eight thousand slaves on St. Croix living under appalling conditions had demanded and been granted emancipation from the Danish governor, and von Scholten had been there to witness how this could be accomplished without bloodshed.”

This excerpt describes a momentous turning point for the island of St. Thomas, the moment when the government outlaws slavery. During Camille’s childhood, slavery still exists on the island. He has always known that slavery is wrong, and he has always hated how even freed slaves were considered inferior. While he is happy about the abolishment of slavery, he is upset to see so much hypocrisy—those who used slave labor now act as though they never owned slaves. He realizes that people are quick to reinvent the past to shield themselves from pain and guilt as they move on to a different future.

“Rosalie went to the grave of the child she had lost. She wished he was alive and had grown up to become a young man who could celebrate freedom for all on their island. She took the fallen leaves from her hair and placed them under her pillow so she would dream of her baby. She no longer thought he’d been taken because she loved him too much. That was foolishness someone had told her, that she’d drowned him, poisoning her with her own milk, and she’d taken the blame upon herself. The truth of the matter was, she loved Enrique too much as well, and her love had done no damage.”

Slavery has been abolished on St. Thomas, so for Rosalie and Mr. Enrique, both former slaves, this moment is particularly joyous. For Rosalie, legal freedom comes with psychological freedom from the kind of harmful folktales that have been used to control the island’s residents. She has spent her life believing the superstition that that her baby boy died because she loved him too much. She even told Rachel to be careful not to love too much because it could have dire consequences. However, she now knows isn’t true. Also important to note is how she takes the fallen leaves in order to dream of her son that night. There is an idea on the island that flying and floating objects represent the presence of the spirits of departed loved ones. By taking the leaves, Rosalie feels like she’s taking a part of him with her.

“Though he went to the synagogue with his father every Friday night, he felt more comfortable with Roland. By now they had realized they’d gone to the same school and had had the same teachers. They could recite the same poems in German and had memorized the same Bible stories. Their current lives were divergent however. Roland had a wife and four little children, and worked twelve-hour days at the hotel.”

When Camille returns to the island after his brother’s death, he quickly becomes friends with Mrs. James’s grandson. He feels that he has more in common with Roland than with peers in the Jewish community, since he went to the Moravian school instead of the Jewish school. However,  Camille is aware that despite this connection, he is more privileged than Roland; he comes from a wealthy family who is able to help him pay his way, while Roland has to work long hours at the hotel to support his family. He starts to feel that it’s unfair to charge people for goods they can’t afford—this is why he later gives Roland’s wife free groceries form his family’s store, and why Rachel finally realizes he doesn’t have a heart for business.

“There was a war brewing in America, and the effects rippled down to everyone. Ships were lost, ships were commandeered, with goods meant for Charleston or New York stolen. It was perhaps the bleakest time for their business, and Rachel was glad Mr. Enrique had long ago suggested to Frédéric that they no longer own the ships themselves. If they had continued in the direction Monsieur Petit had led them, they would likely be destitute by now, accepting charity from their community instead of helping those in need, something Camille seemed to have overlooked completely. Every Sunday food was brought down to the synagogue for those who were faltering in their businesses and their lives, and Rachel was more than glad to give what she could.”

This moment comes towards the end of the novel, when Rachel, Frédéric, Camille, and Jestine are about to leave St. Thomas and move to France. The political unrest in the US puts other businesses on the island in jeopardy, but Rachel credits their success to Mr. Enrique’s good business sense. Also, Rachel comments on giving charity to those less fortunate. Before this moment, while Camille is working at the family store, he gives away free groceries to those in need. He worries that his bourgeois family is out of touch with the needs of the poor. However, it’s not that Rachel ignores the needs of those less fortunate. Instead, the difference between Camille’s and Rachel’s sense of charity boils down to who they want to give it to: Camille wants to give charity to anyone who needs it, while Rachel favors the synagogue—the Jewish community.

“Camille came and asked for our approval to marry my maid, admitting that Julie had become pregnant. We denounced their union, for we were reminded of ourselves and we did not wish the same troubles on our son that we had experienced. Then the baby was lost. After that I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Who would I find there? I wondered if every girl grew up to be a stranger to herself.”

This passage demonstrates the complexity of Rachel’s character. When Rachel was younger she followed her passions and desires regardless of consequence, just like Camille is doing with Julie. However, while Rachel recognizes the similarities between Camille’s situation and her own, memories of the pain she had gone through make her more adamant to stop Camille. However, on the inside, she feels guilty for her actions, knowing that Camille inherited the desire to pursue his passions no matter what from her. When Rachel was younger and pursuing Frédéric, nothing and no one could stop her. Camille is exactly like Rachel in this way, so by trying to be the one to stop him she is acting like the Jewish community that opposed her as a young woman. 

“The baby was often asleep on my bed when her father came for the children at the close of the day. He said it was a wonder how well his daughter slumbered when she was in my care. I told him that babies needed to sleep in order to dream. I believe my namesake dreamed of a thousand small miracles and that she dreamed of the turtle-woman from our homeland.”

Rachel is now an older, widowed woman who cares for her grandchildren while Camille is working. Camille has named his baby daughter after her. Rachel takes this tribute as a sign that the little girl in a sense belongs to her, and she becomes a devoted grandmother. The girl also opens the door for Rachel and Camille to regain some closeness. Notably, Rachel imagines her granddaughter dreaming about St. Thomas, for when Rachel was a little girl she dreamed of France.