78 pages • 2 hours read
Kristin HannahThe Nightingale
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 35-39Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 35 Summary
By August 1944, D-Day has taken place, the Germans are rapidly losing territory in France, and in Carriveau, the airfield has been destroyed. All of this makes Von Richter even crueler: “The Germans were losing the war, and Von Richter seemed hell-bent on making Vianne pay for it” (495). Sophie spots her mother one night after she’s been with Von Richter and brushes aside Vianne’s explanation that she is protecting her: “There’s no such thing […] Grandpère is dead. Tante Isabelle is… […] And Papa…when did we last hear from him? A year? Eight months? He’s probably dead, too” (496). Vianne insists that Antoine and Isabelle are still alive and says what she does with Von Richter is simply “[her] war” (496) to bear.
In September, Vianne realizes that she is pregnant. Roughly a week afterwards, as the Germans leave Carriveau, Von Richter approaches Vianne: “‘I’ll forget you.’ He leaned forward. ‘I wonder if you can say the same’” (501).
Antoine arrives home a month later. Vianne meets him unexpectedly on an evening walk and is shocked by his appearance: “[H]is face had sharpened and his hair had gone gray. White stubble covered his hollow cheeks and jawline, and he was so terribly thin. His left arm hung at an odd angle, as if it had been broken and badly reset” (503). That night, Vianne tries to tell her husband the truth about Beck and Von Richter but eventually decides that it is better for him not to know. They consummate their reunion, though the moment lacks romance for Vianne: “She closed her eyes and returned his kiss, waiting for her body to come alive at his touch, but when she slid beneath him and felt their bodies come together as they’d done so many times before, she felt nothing at all” (508).
Two months later, Vianne is unable to sleep and goes outside to look at the apple tree. Antoine joins her, and she tells him that she is pregnant, claiming to have conceived the night he returned. He describes the pregnancy as miraculous, saying that they must “choose to see miracles” (510) after what they have been through. Wondering if he guessed the truth, Vianne feels “lucky to have found this man” and certain that she’ll “find her way back to him” (510) in time.
Chapter 36 Summary
A harsh winter and the brutal conditions at Ravensbrück have taken a toll on Isabelle by early spring. She is placed on road crew and—unable to cope with the physical demands—beaten multiple times, eventually to the point of unconsciousness. By March, she’s sick with pneumonia and typhus, but Micheline refuses to allow her to give up.
Early one morning, Isabelle, Micheline, and several of their fellow prisoners are sent on a forced march to another camp. Several women die along the way, and after two days of walking, they are put on a train and transported to another camp. Isabelle, now nearly delirious, hears one of the camp’s prisoners calling her name and sees that it is Anouk. In addition to telling Isabelle that the prisoners are being killed, Anouk reveals that Paul and Gaëtan have been arrested and presumably sent to camps, and Henri was executed back in Carriveau. Isabelle is then shoved back into line: “She saw her friend mouth ‘Good-bye,’ and Isabelle couldn’t even respond. She was so, so tired of good-byes” (520).
Chapter 37 Summary
In March, Vianne, Antoine, and Sophie travel to Paris in search of Isabelle. At a hotel, they see crowds of freed prisoners, as well as families and friends searching for lost loved ones. Vianne asks a Red Cross worker for information about Isabelle, Rachel, and Rachel’s husband Marc, then tells her about the children hidden in the orphanage. The worker promises to find out about Vianne’s sister and friends and directs her to another worker. As Vianne tells the second worker about the children, apologizing for the fact that she was only able to save 19, “[h]e looked up at her as if she were a heroine instead of a scared survivor. ‘It is nineteen who would have died in the camps along with their parents, Madame’” (524). The woman Vianne spoke to earlier then approaches, informing her that she could not find any records of Isabelle and that Rachel and Marc are both dead. As they return home, Vianne tells Sophie that Daniel will truly be her brother now.
Around the same time, Isabelle’s camp is finally liberated by American forces, although she is almost too sick to recognize what’s happening: “Isabelle’s knees gave out. ‘Mich…e…line,’ she whispered, her voice as broken as her spirit. ‘We…made…it’” (527).
Vianne hears nothing of her sister, and her relationship with Antoine remains somewhat strained. When he and the children put on a play for her enjoyment, it gives her hope that life can return to the way it once was. As the performance ends, two men from the Help the Children Fund arrive at Le Jardin; they thank Vianne for saving the lives of so many Jewish children and inform her that they are taking Ari to live with a relative in America. Vianne objects that she and her husband are the only parents Ari has ever known, but the men are firm:
You look at the heartbreak of one boy. I am here because of the heartbreak of my people […] Millions of Jews were killed in this war, Madame. […] An entire generation is gone. We need to band together now, those few of us who are left; we need to rebuild (533).
Devastated, Vianne packs up Ari’s things. She attempts to explain to him why he must go, but he continues crying even as the car drives away.
Chapter 38 Summary
At a Parisian hospital, Micheline tells Isabelle that it is time for her to go home to Carriveau. Isabelle is sorrowful as she says her goodbyes, despite Micheline’s attempts to remind her of the future she has to look forward to: “I am past tense. The girl I was…” (541).
Vianne is waiting for Isabelle at the train station in Carriveau and greets her joyfully. Once she is settled into bed, Isabelle tries to apologize for what happened with Beck. Vianne says that she is the one who should apologize and asks if they can “start over now” (543). Guessing that Vianne’s pregnancy was the result of rape, Isabelle attempts to comfort her: “My body…they broke that in the first days, but not my heart, V. Whatever he did, it was to your body, and your body will heal” (544).
Isabelle remains seriously ill, as well as confused and traumatized. One rainy morning, she walks out of the house and into the road, telling Vianne that she needs to travel to Paris to find Gaëtan. Vianne persuades her to come back inside, reassuring her that the war is over and they can write to Gaëtan. Later that day, the sisters read the letter their father left to them. In it, he apologizes for his failures as a father and assures them of his love: “Forgive me, my daughters, for all of it, and know that as I say good-bye, I loved you both with all of my damaged heart” (548). Isabelle reminds Vianne to cherish her family, and Vianne tries to assure her sister that she will get better and have a family of her own.
A few days later, Isabelle is sitting outside listening to Sophie read when Vianne tells her she has a visitor: Gaëtan. Isabelle is overjoyed but also upset, worrying that Gaëtan will find her ugly now; when he embraces her, however, he “stare[s] down at her and the love in his eyes burn[s] away everything bad; it [is] just them again, Gaëtan and Isabelle, somehow falling in love in a world at war” (550). The couple reaffirms their love for one another, and Isabelle is overwhelmed with gratitude for the love and friendship she has known.
Chapter 39 Summary: “May 7, 1995, Somewhere over France”
Julien and his mother arrive in Paris. After resting, they walk around the city to pass the time before the reunion begins—they stroll, eat macarons, and share a bottle of wine. The woman is nervous and tries to stay at the back of the room, but the organizers insist she take her seat on the dais with three other women—one of whom is Anouk.
The woman is revealed to be Vianne when she is invited to speak. She does so hesitantly, explaining that her “sister, Isabelle, was a woman of great passions” (558) and that she sometimes misjudged Isabelle as a result. Vianne goes on to discuss the role Isabelle and their father played in the French Resistance and explains that they kept their work from her to protect her. When Isabelle returned from the concentration camp, Vianne says, she was “broken and sick,” but content with the life she’d led and the choices she made: “I know she saved some of the men in this room, but I know that you saved her, too. Isabelle Rossignol died both a hero and a woman in love […] So, I thank you all, for giving her life meaning, for bringing out the very best in her” (559-60). As she speaks, Vianne thinks back to the moment Isabelle died in Gaëtan’s arms.
After the reception, an elderly man approaches Vianne: it is Gaëtan, and he introduces her to his daughter, whom he named Isabelle. He leaves, and another man approaches—Vianne recognizes him as Ari. He tells her he never forgot his adoptive family, and thanks Vianne for saving his life. When Vianne turns to explain this remark to Julien, Ari says she is “being modest” (563) and tells him about the 19 children she rescued. Overwhelmed, Julien asks whether his father knew about any of this. Privately resolving never to tell her son the truth about his parentage, Vianne credits Julien with saving her life and her marriage and promises to tell him “[a]lmost everything” (564).
Chapters 35-39 Analysis
Hannah waits until the final chapter to explicitly reveal the identity of the elderly woman who narrates the first-person chapters. Readers may have surmised her identity early, however, thanks to several clues. For example, the woman’s description of her marriage suggests that her relationship with her husband largely conformed to gender norms—which is one of Vianne’s well-depicted characteristics: “I have let [my son] think I am weak, all these years; he watched me lean on his father and defer to his decision making. He heard me say, ‘If that’s what you think, dear,’ a million times” (385). Most telling are the woman’s references to motherhood. While it is possible Isabelle might have had children if she survived, the narrator describes motherhood as a life purpose, thus reflecting Vianne’s motivations throughout the novel: “Once a mother, always a mother” (440).
Unveiling Vianne’s identity is closely tied to a second revelation: Isabelle died the same day she was reunited with Gaëtan. Because the real-life woman Isabelle is loosely based on—Andrée de Jongh—survived long after the war, this is a deliberate narrative choice clearly meant to underscore themes of trauma and loss. Hannah describes the physical effects of Isabelle’s imprisonment in graphic detail—at one point likening her to “a bald, eyebrowless skeleton, with some of her teeth gone and most of her fingernails missing” (550). While it is the cumulative effects of starvation, exhaustion, and sickness that ultimately kill Isabelle, the psychological toll Ravensbrück takes on her is equally devastating. Isabelle fights to survive long enough to see France’s liberation, but once this dream has been fulfilled, she seems to lose much of her will to live. For instance, when Vianne attempts to cheer her up with thoughts of marrying Gaëtan, Isabelle simply responds, “What a pretty future that would be” (549), implying she can no longer envision such a life for herself. Even if Isabelle had survived, it is possible she would not have been able to reacclimate to ordinary life. As Vianne puts it, “The Isabelle who came home from the concentration camp was not the woman who’d survived the bombing of Tours or crossed the Pyrenees” (559). In some sense, Isabelle’s physical death is just an extension of the figurative death she already experienced.
Vianne is also traumatized by her experiences during WWII, which is one reason why she has remained so silent on the subject—particularly given the truth of her son Julien’s parentage. Vianne, however, attributes her silence not so much to trauma as to custom, telling Julien that “get[ting] on with it” (561) is simply what women do. Women like Vianne never talked about what they went through once the war was over, both because war was traditionally seen as a male experience and because women are used to doing unnoticed, thankless work (childrearing, cleaning, etc.) This makes the passeurs reunion, as well as Julien’s personal desire to hear his mother’s story, all the more significant—half a century after WWII, the stories of women in occupied France are finally being heard and their contributions recognized.
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