The Keeper of Happy Endings

Soline is the second protagonist and primary narrator of the novel. She is characterized by self-reliance, courage, relationships, and magic. As a young woman, she showed resilience and strength by staying with Maman in Paris rather than fleeing to safety, even though the occupation was imminent. This act put her in danger but showed her loyalty and commitment to her family. She joins the Resistance as a courier, putting her life at risk in the service of others and drawing her closer to Anson. Even though she says that she never felt particularly brave, helping the Resistance “feels right. Not just for Paris but for Anson” (158). This draws the reader’s attention from the macro context of war to the micro context of love, indirectly conveying the significance that Soline places on interpersonal relationships and romance.

Soline’s memories outline her character development. Her journey to America was difficult, and she arrives “thin as a rake […] exhausted after weeks of seasickness and uncertainty” (195). She does her best to remain strong under Owen’s oppressive watch. When she is thrown out, Davis highlights the theme of Community and Healing as Soline forges a strong relationship with Maddy that gets her back on her feet.

Soline has the ability to create close relationships throughout her life, something that makes her isolation after the fire appear all the more tragic and the eventual restoration of relationships more poignant. Her relationships are some of the defining features of Soline: she cared for Maman on her deathbed, had a deep attachment with and love for Anson that spanned decades, was a sister figure to Thia, made a best friend in Maddy, and became close to Rory even if it meant coming out of her seclusion. Later in life, as Rory’s friend and then grandmother, she serves a role of “fairy godmother,” someone in whom Rory can place trust and find solidarity as a trusted confidant. She also acts as a conduit to relationship building: Camilla and Rory find common ground because Soline explains the primary tension of their relationship; Camilla is lonely and afraid of letting Rory go; and Soline surmises that “perhaps that’s why fate has thrown me into their lives. To broker peace” (343). Her function as a protagonist is therefore in part to catalyze the novel’s resolution. Though she feels fragile after the losses in her life, she is also open to love, never giving up on Anson’s memory and then fully accepting the ways in which magic and fate have brought her family back together.

The fire was a turning point in her life—as she says, “my whole life is marked as either before the fire or after the fire” (89). The scars it produced are symbols of the trauma that she endured: The burns on her hands serve as a constant reminder of what she has lost. She sees the scars as something to hide from the outside work by wearing gloves. Similarly, when she faces difficulty in relationships, she retreats back to isolation in her home. Not only is she physically scarred by the burns, but they also leave her incapable of sewing; the fire robbed her of the ability to create and design, which strips her of agency and purpose. At the conclusion of the novel, she is able to painstakingly sew a charm into her own gown, which reflects the way that her trauma has healed. Though Soline was “taught from a tender age that happy endings are for other people” (35), she now discovers and accepts that she is not too old or broken to have love, connection, and family in her life. Out of decades of grief, tragedy, and loss, she ultimately returns to the craft that once gave her life meaning and connected her to her family of gifted dressmakers and looks forward to her future with her Anson, Camilla, Rory, and Thia.

Camilla is characterized by her social status, speech, and physical appearance. She serves as a foil to Rory; while Rory wants to buck family tradition to create her own life, Camilla remains firmly rooted in the expectations and customs of Boston high society. Camilla’s characterization evolves throughout the novel. At first, she is heavily involved in philanthropy, social activities like the opera and luncheons, and surrounds herself with friends of her social rank, as demonstrated in her concerns about whether to let Soline into the art council: “Don’t you think we should find out if she’s our sort of person first?” (185). Once her relationship with Rory is mended and she has been honest about her adoption, Camilla fully accepts Soline, signaling a softening of her relational boundaries and a broader deconstruction of classism.

Overbearing and controlling throughout much of the novel, Camilla insists on being involved in every aspect of Rory’s life: She makes calls on Rory’s behalf, asks to coordinate the catering and music for the gallery opening, buys her clothing, and puts her daughter on display in front of her society friends. At the end of the novel, one of the core pieces of the family puzzle is the picture of an eight-year-old Rory in a party dress, frozen in front of her piano when Camilla demanded she perform a recital. To Rory, the picture symbolizes the role that Camilla expected her to play: perfect, obedient daughter who exists to make her mother look good. She recalls her mother saying, “[c]ome now, Aurora, you don’t want to embarrass Mommy in front of her friends” (182). After their reconciliation, Camilla praises Rory for her bravery and ability to make her dreams a reality; rather than wanting Rory to follow the script that she has written, she accepts that Rory’s dream is to open the gallery and even encourages her to display her own art.

Throughout much of the novel, Camilla is formal, insisting on using Rory’s given name, Aurora, until the end when she addresses her by Rory for the first time. This illustrates Camilla’s development; calling Rory by her preferred name shows that she has come to respect her daughter’s wishes for autonomy. Camilla is characterized by her elegant physical appearance and immaculate presentation to the world. Her home is pristine, “a study in monied good taste” (10), and she has strict rules about cleanliness. She never allows for the messiness of art, which contrasts with Soline and Rory, both artists who have creative spaces in their homes. Camilla wears only beige and neutral clothing and keeps her hair and makeup flawless. As their relationship heals, Camilla trades her typical wardrobe for colorful clothes and heeled boots, and Rory “is both thrilled and surprised by how quickly her mother’s cool beige persona had morphed into something vibrant and almost playful” (345). The motif of clothing and dress reflects her internal development as Camilla finally embraces the relationships in her life, loosens her grip on Rory, and shares honestly about her experiences. 

Anson is a central character who serves as the love interest for Soline and, ultimately, the patriarch of the family. He is characterized by his bravery and selflessness in taking on dangerous and deadly work of driving ambulances and hiding and transporting Allied airmen. To Soline, he is the picture of an American hero: blonde, tan, broad-shouldered, and charming. He is chivalrous, generous, and accepting, and decides to leave Yale to join the cause. Anson possesses privilege and advantages that others do not: He is a white man from a wealthy family, attends an Ivy League university, and has the ability to leave school to pursue volunteer work. His choice is to risk his life when he joins the AFS and the Resistance and then devote his professional life to philanthropy and service. These qualities make him a sympathetic character because, like Soline, Davis portrays him as someone who has been hardened by life. His ability to seek forgiveness from Soline and Rory when he knows that he treated them poorly exhibits his growth as a character; he returns back to the qualities of kindness and warmth that he possessed as a young man.

Anson’s father is the antagonist and static character of the novel. He a cruel and domineering man who is characterized by his physical appearance, speech, and actions. When Owen enters the novel, his tailor-made suits are impeccable, but his drinking intensifies during Soline’s stay and, as his well-being declines, he becomes disheveled and unkempt. In contrast to the initial clothing, he begins to wear the same wrinkled clothes repeatedly as his mistreatment of Soline continues; Davis creates a correlation between his internal and external disintegration. He becomes increasingly agitated and aggressive in his treatment of her. His thinly veiled insults—like asking Soline, “how did you and my son become…friends?” in an attempt to diminish their relationship (203)—escalate to outright accusations of her “shopping for a meal ticket” when meeting Anson (221). Though handsome, Soline remembers Owen for his “cold, watchful eyes” (203) and “a mouth unused to smiling” (199), descriptions which add to his portrayal as the antagonist of the novel.

He does not evolve over the course of the novel. His motivation is to control Anson’s future by any means necessary, regardless of the harm that he does to his son and others in the process. Owen is dead when the Roussel-Purcell family reconciles, and there is never an indication of his remorse or an admission of guilt. His duplicitous nature and deception play a major role in the conflict of the novel. In the end, the worst insult that Soline can level at Anson is that he has become like his father: She tells him that, in the beginning, “it seemed impossible that you could be his son. Now, I see that there’s more of him in you than I realized” (380). Anson realizes that he can still change and not become like his father, allowing him to break a generational pattern. Ultimately, Owen’s successful attempt to keep Anson and Soline apart and to separate them both from their child has reverberations that span generations; his choices inflict harm on Soline, Anson, Camilla, Thia, and Rory until they are able to heal the family trauma on their own without his interference.