Titled

this will not be coherent.

okay so helene's character is, to a T, the Idealized Female Archetype of the 19th century. you know the type: the Angel of the House, perfectly content in the domestic sphere. she plays music, she embroiders, she reads Good Christian Novels, she scrupulously attends church, she's perfectly kind and patient and gracious to everyone she meets, a doting wife, a loving mother, all that shit. she's a very likable character because she's designed to be: flawlessly kind, and utterly innocent of the destruction alinska is about to bring upon her household. there's definitely a sort of...Cautionary Tale About The Dangers Of Being Too Nice To Outsiders vibe here, but in this post we are going to be ignoring that. the author is dead and his grave is a gender neutral bathroom, and there's enough cracks in the narrative facade for me to deconstruct helene's character and give her a little more juice.

let's talk about neurodivergence. alinska is crazy ND-coded.

Madame Delmont, who would have found herself in absolute seclusion after the departure of her neighbors, was not displeased that Alinska was prolonging her sojourn. It was not, undoubtedly, a very pleasant society; her habitual melancholy, the silence she maintained when she was not asked questions, the brevity of her answers and, even more so, the indefinable air of her physiognomy, were not attractive. She sang, it is true, with style, and accompanied herself on the harp; but it was while she was shut up in her room that she devoted herself to those pastimes. An invincible timidity, she said, did not permit her to play in front of anyone else.

From that moment on, Alinska’s unsociability seemed to increase. She only emerged from her room at meal times; she sat down at the table, where she scarcely took enough nourishment to sustain her existence. She was vainly urged to eat more, obstinately refusing the best dishes, contenting herself with a little meat, which she sucked—for she appeared not to like vegetables at all.

The Hungarian woman rarely put any expression into what she said, or did. One might have thought, most of the time, one examining her actions, that she was not so much a living creature as an animate automaton, solely obedient to the impulse of springs that moved her relentlessly in a uniform manner.

a lot of her character traits read as kind of autistic-coded, although many of them are directly related to her vampirism. she's definitely clinically depressed. the other characters also all interpret her monologues about being dead and damned and forced down the track of vengeance by God and so forth as proof that she is mad. helene herself concludes this shortly upon meeting her, and is a little scared of her, but remains determined to show her compassion:

The latter would have liked to terminate that painful scene, but a sentiment of compassion still controlled her; she feared, in going away, leaving an individual devoid of help whose woeful madness seemed complete. “Aren’t you suffering too much at present to continue your walk?” she said. “Would you permit me to take you back to the place where you’re living?”

the passage that gets me, though, is from much later in the book, when helene is dying, and requests that alinska come visit her and keep her company. alinska, although she seems to be isolating herself in an (unsuccessful) attempt to keep helene safe from her, obliges, resulting in this passage:

A little reflection reminded her of Alinska’s known character; she also recalled the customary strangeness of all her manners, and realized that it was necessary not to take offense at anything she did, for she did not do anything as everyone else did. Hélène had need of company; she was accustomed to hers; ought she complain about finding her with all her eccentricities and unsocial habits?

see, it's not about helene just having sympathy for alinska, or treating her politely; helene accommodates alinska's ways even when they put her at odds with social politeness; she doesn't attempt to make her conform.

As soon as he had gone, Alinska got up and went out, as if to go to her room, without giving any reason for her departure. Madame Delmont knew how the slightest question was capable of displeasing her, so she never asked her any.

it stands out to me starkly because really, this level of compassion for alinska is not expected of an upper-class woman in this time period. alinska is a foreigner, an outsider to the community, a person of low social standing, an antisocial recluse, and to all appearances mad. but helene doesn't just show her charity, she genuinely becomes her friend. she tolerates alinska's deviation from social norms, and adjusts her own behavior to accomodate her friend.

but we can go further. earlier in the story, after learning alinska has left the delmont household, helene tosses off this line:

We’ll need to send on her clothes; doubtless she won’t have taken them, in order to deceive us more effectively.

we know nothing about helene's back story; she only exists in the story as a wife and mother. but she jumps to this idea so immediately that i have to wonder if it comes from personal experience. maybe helene is not as neurotypical as the author would like you to think. maybe she tried to run away as a teenager, or at least thought about running away.

maybe, when helene is transformed by her grief, that is not a new development of her character, but an old one showing itself from behind the mask she's grown accustomed to putting on.

Time had not yet deadened Madame Delmont’s grief, having been unable to gain any purchase on her. She was almost always to be seen in constant immobility, holding a book whose pages she never turned, or inundating an item of embroidery with her tears. A bleak melancholy had taken possession of her; it was only briefly that, recovering the exercise of her consciousness, she testified to her husband that he was still dear to her. She never allowed her daughter to be apart from her. If Juliette, carried away by her natural impetuosity, occasionally forgot her mother’s instruction, the latter, launching herself out of the room in tears, shouted for her loudly, only seeming reassured when the child came back. She examined Juliette’s cheerful face for hours on end; it seemed to her that the little girl was already infected by the deadly malady that had carried off her son; then her despair knew no bounds.

how much of herself does helene see in alinska? how much does she extend to her the treatment she knows she would have wanted at an earlier point in her life? (how much does she still want it?)

there's something so poignant to me about a helene who struggled with mental illness earlier in her life, trying to reassure a young woman she sees herself in. when alinska states matter-of-factly that her lot in life is fixed, that her presence can only bring despair and misfortune, that there is no hope of turning from her course, helene recognizes, or thinks she recognizes, the tunnel vision of depression. she wants to reassure her that it gets better. she doesn't realize that the problem is more than mental illness, that alinska really is trapped in her situation. only in death does she realize the truth of what was happening, what alinska is and why she was there.

and how does she respond? she and her son are dead by alinska's hand. alinska was drawn here by her husband's broken promise, to carry out a destructive revenge against him. what does she feel when, as a spirit, she watches him fall back into love with the woman who murdered her? what does she feel when his obliviousness leads to alinska's death in turn?