Fresh Water for Flowers

“Nono is the person I trust the most. He’s an upstanding man who has joie de vivre in his blood. Everything amuses him and he never says no. Apart from when there’s a child’s burial to attend to. He leaves ‘that’ to the others.”

The gravediggers each have their own personality and are each very dear to Violette, but it is alluded to more than once that she and Nono have a special relationship. His lighthearted nature provides a respite from the darker aspects of the story; however, his aversion to the deaths of children shows a deeper connection between him and Violette.

“I felt my skin tighten, like it had a premonition. He was ten years older than me. The age difference gave him stature. I felt like a butterfly gazing at a star.”

The scenes from Violette’s past are told in past tense, unlike the present-tense narration of the contemporary story. This line foreshadows events to come and the dynamic of the couple’s relationship from the point of view of a frightened young girl.

“A man of fifty-five, died from smoking too much. Well, that’s what the doctors said. They never say that a man of fifty-five can die from not having been loved, not having been heard, getting too many bills, buying too much on credit, seeing his children grow up and leave home without really saying goodbye.”

It is not a coincidence that Philippe was around this age when he died; the newspaper article about his crash listed him as “Man of around fifty-five years old” (186). As readers later learn, it was not the crash that truly killed Philippe but his trauma and shame. This quote shows that life and death are complexly interwoven—an idea key to the theme of The Spiritual Versus Material World.

“I don’t fit into boxes. I’ve never fitted into boxes. When I do a test in a women’s magazine—‘Get to know yourself,’ or ‘Know yourself better’—there’s no clear result for me. I’m always a bit of everything.”

There are many sides to Violette. Her depiction in the novel’s middle and end sharply contrasts with how she is described on the day she meets Philippe. The term “boxes” also brings to mind the coffins that are so prevalent in the background of the story and suggests that truly living means living a multifaceted life rather than a narrow, boxed-in version of one.

“I bought that eight-hundred-and-twenty-one-page book, even though just reading one sentence and understanding it could take hours. As if I were a size 50 and had bought myself size-36 jeans. But buy it I did, because the apple made my mouth water.”

The Cider House Rules becomes a constant companion for Violette throughout her life even though she can barely understand it when she meets it for the first time. In her narration, she blames the cover, but the passage hints that the true motivation is much deeper. After all, if she were only interested in the cover, she could display the book without ever opening it. These conflicting desires display the depth of Violette’s character, which even she seems unaware of.

“The only ghosts I believe in are memories. Whether real or imagined. For me, entities, specters, spirits, all such supernatural things only exist in the mind of the living.”

Despite her unusual career, Violette is pragmatic. She believes only in the tangible and the seen. However, her records of burials and the stories told by the living left behind show that memories are every bit as powerful as supernatural spirits. The earthly and the otherworldly are not necessarily in conflict but can exist as layers of one another.

“When her big eyes stared at me, I thought she looked like the sky, the universe, a monster. I found her ugly and beautiful. Furious and gentle. Intensely close and unfamiliar. A marvel and a venom within the same person. I spoke to her as if we were continuing a conversation begun a very long time ago.”

The use of juxtaposition and repetition here displays Violette’s widening understanding of the world and recalls her inability to “fit into boxes,” as discussed above. This moment shows the deep connection between Violette and Léonine and foreshadows how their relationship will bring Violette both unspeakable joy and unspeakable pain.

“I think I succeeded in looking after my daughter, despite my young age. I managed to find the gestures, the voice, the touch, the attention. As the years went by, the fear of losing her went quiet. I finally understood that there would be no reason for us to abandon each other.”

Violette struggles with a fear of abandonment, and her relationship with Léonine begins to heal the traumas that led to that fear. However, this moment also foreshadows the tragedy that will pull Léonine away from her—not by abandonment but by forces beyond either of their control.

“After six months, I was scared he’d come back. Once I’d got used to his absence, I got my breath back. As if I’d been underwater for a long time, at the bottom of a swimming pool. His departure allowed me to push off and rise back up to the surface to breathe.”

Violette’s relationship with Philippe was very damaging, and in some ways prolonged her difficult childhood. With him, she was unable to ever grow into her own person fully. Here she is finally beginning the journey toward self-actualization that was denied to her for so long.

“[E]verything was written in the clothing. Innocence, regrets, guilt, hatred, or forgiveness.”

Violette and Gabriel both put unusual emphasis on clothes—Violette with her summer and winter wardrobes, and Gabriel with his analytical eye of a courtroom. Violette and Irène also both experience how changing their outfits can create the sensation of a new life. This line supports the idea that outfit choices can reveal and even influence a person’s interiority.

“It was the first time since our arrival that the rooms had been so warm. Célia lived in Marseilles. I told her she must’ve brought the sun right into the house. That usually, the heat didn’t get in, that there was an invisible barrier that prevented it from doing so.”

Célia was the first truly positive influence in Violette’s life after years of deprivation and solitude. The lack of heat shown here is a metaphor for Violette’s life with Philippe; on some level, Violette recognizes this and sees how different things are when she’s with someone who treats her with care and respect.

“On July 13th, 1993, Anaïs’s parents came to our place to take away my daughter.”

This line is simple and understated, yet the complete calendar date leading the sentence shows that this moment has particular weight. The line has a double meaning: Anaïs’s parents took Léonine both from Violette’s home and from her life completely. To the reader, the second meaning will not become clear until later.

“I’ve always worn colors under my dark clothes to cock a snook at death. Like the women who wear makeup under their burka. Today, I feel like doing the opposite. I feel like putting on a black dress, and slipping a pink coat over it.”

This quote again explores the power of clothing on a person’s emotions and perception of the world around them. In Violette’s examples, only the person wearing the clothes and makeup knows the truth: It is hidden from everyone else. She turns to her outfit as she tries to make sense of the despair she is feeling, addressing it internally while putting on an unaffected front for the rest of the world.

“[T]he tears I shed did me good. They cleansed me of nasty things, like bad sweat, like poisonous toxins oozing out of me. The dirty tears, the muddy ones. Like stagnant water, the sort that just festers at the bottom of a hole, long after the rain has stopped.”

Much of Violette’s story centers around her rebirth from a place of stasis and stagnation. Here she is spending time with Sasha and learning what it is like to have someone care for her and allow her the space to breathe and heal. This simile evokes the trauma and unresolved feelings that have built up and had nowhere to go until this new chapter of her life begins setting them free.

“I took it as a sign. It was as if I’d failed my first year of marriage by not understanding my wife at all, but still had dozens more ahead of me to make up for it.”

Sasha is not speaking of a literal wife here but of his beloved garden. He is using a metaphor intentionally, but this metaphor can be extended to encompass aspects of Violette’s life too. He is offering her permission to make mistakes as she learns to adapt to her new existence and to try again.

“When I rediscovered my body, when I saw it reflected in a shop window, it was that of a woman. I put it into dresses, skirts, and blouses. My facial features changed. If I’d been a painting, my face would have gone from an angular Bernard Buffet to an almost ethereal Auguste Renoir.”

The author uses two highly contrasting yet well-known French painters to create a vivid image of Violette’s transformation. This grounds the reader in the setting and tone of the novel while also displaying Violette’s awareness of her regrowth. The reference to rediscovering the body is notable. The line carries no sexual weight in the scene; it is completely personal and internal.

“I knew that Léonine was far more present in the Mediterranean I’d just come from, and among the flowers in Sasha’s garden, than beneath this tombstone.”

Violette struggles with her inability to attend Léonine’s funeral. She has previously expressed that she doesn’t believe in ghosts or spirits who linger after death, but the underlying tone of this statement seems to contradict that. The passage again suggests how the spiritual and the earthly, ghosts and memories, can sometimes blur together.

“I go to the shop with Nathan. I hold his hand. An old habit. Those gestures you never forget. That are part of us, without thinking. Like a hair color, a familiar smell, a resemblance.”

Violette straddles both the future and the past. Léonine is so deeply a part of her that some piece of Violette forgets that she is no longer there. However, her growing life beside Nathan feels equally natural in her body. This line shows how those two lives can coexist harmoniously within Violette’s consciousness.

“Is that what youth really is? Can one make its acquaintance at almost fifty years old? I, who never had a youth, might I have kept it preciously without realizing?”

As the novel draws toward its close, Violette learns that life doesn’t always have to be linear and that growth can happen even after decimating tragedy. Much like Sasha’s discovery about his garden and Violette’s early quote about her taste for unhappiness, this shows how beginning to live can be a conscious choice at any age.

“Philippe hadn’t heard that smile in her voice for years. When he found her, crouching at the back of the vegetable garden, picking plump tomatoes, red as a young girl’s cheeks, when he saw her biting into one of them, it reminded him of the sparkle in her eyes at the maternity hospital, on the day of Léonine’s birth.”

During the first half of the novel, Philippe is presented as distant and psychologically abusive. Later, however, it emerges that there is a real love between him and Violette, complex and toxic as it may be. This moment shows a glimmer of the potential they could have had if they had both been emotionally and psychologically healthier.

“There was a real solidarity between the cemetery staff and the funeral directors. One could be replaced. A gravedigger could replace a pallbearer, who could replace a monumental mason, who could replace the funeral director, who could replace the cemetery keeper, when one of them felt unable to face a difficult funeral. The only person who couldn’t be replaced was the priest.”

Although many might think of a cemetery as a depressing, morbid place, the novel shows that this one contains a real sense of community. Each of the cemetery workers supports the others and understands how certain moments may be sensitive. Only Father Cédric stands on the fringe of this community, which parallels his warring desires for fatherhood and the priesthood.

“I had immediately felt the necessity to leave some trace of those last moments, so that nothing got forgotten. For all those who weren’t able to attend the ceremony due to pain, grief, distance, rejection, or exclusion, someone would be there to say, to testify, to tell, to report. As I wished had been done for the funeral of my daughter.”

Once again, the dead live on not as specters but as memories. The practice of maintaining the burial register is one thing that separates Violette from Sasha and develops the theme of Responsibility to the Dead. Although Violette does not believe in ghosts, she has a strong affinity for the stories the dead leave behind them and feels the necessity of maintaining their memories. This loyalty is also reflected in the way she cleans and maintains the older graves.

“And in the evening, after the supper we shared, he would hug me again, saying, ‘Goodbye, Violette, look after yourself, I love you,’ as if it were the last time.”

Violette gradually lets go of Sasha as she learns how to heal from within. Sasha speaks these words regularly without too much thought, but they are sentiments Violette would have heard very rarely, if ever, in her lifetime. Rather than making a grand declaration, Sasha normalizes these words for Violette, so she accepts them as a natural part of who she is.