Haleed

Haleed is the name claimed by the woman formerly called Odelette, an enslaved member of Marie-Josèphe de la Croix’s household who becomes Marie-Josèphe’s sister by affection and, ultimately, by blood. Her story moves from a promise of freedom to a contested, unsigned manumission and a departure from France. At its heart is a sharp distinction between being declared free and being able to leave: Haleed asserts her identity and makes plans for home, while the household and court around her continue to treat her liberty as negotiable.

Identity and Background

For much of her life in the household, Haleed is known as Odelette. When Marie-Josèphe promises to free her, Haleed recalls that the mother superior had told her freedom would never come. The memory points to a life in which other people could make promises about her future, and deny them, while she remained dependent on their decisions. Marie-Josèphe’s tenderness does not erase that history, but it gives Haleed a person willing to make a direct commitment to her.

Haleed herself names the change that matters: when Yves de la Croix addresses her as Odelette, she answers, “My name is not Odelette. My name is Haleed.” Asked whether she has become a Mahometan, she confirms that she has. The exchange is more than a change of address. Haleed refuses to let Yves’s laughter turn her name or her religious choice into a joke, and answers him plainly in front of the household.

Her history also reveals the violence underlying her relationship to Marie-Josèphe. When the sisters speak privately near the end of the novel, Haleed explains that their father owned her mother, who was his to use without regard for what she wanted or feared. The disclosure makes their sisterhood a consequence of enslavement and sexual coercion, not simply a bond they have chosen. Haleed does not describe this inheritance as a reason to hate Marie-Josèphe: she says she loves her, even as she prepares to leave.

Freedom Promised and Contested

Marie-Josèphe first promises to free Haleed, but the practical and legal force of that promise is disputed. Yves objects when Marie-Josèphe says she has freed her and adopted her as their sister. He argues that Haleed is their only possession of value, insists that Marie-Josèphe must wait five years until she comes of age, and refuses to sign papers. He also maintains that they cannot live at court without a servant. His response reduces the question of Haleed’s future to the household’s needs and to his own authority over the document.

Haleed’s reaction is physical and immediate: she rises so quickly that her chair crashes over and flees to Marie-Josèphe’s bedroom. The overturned chair registers the force of a conflict that Yves treats as an argument about property and timing, but Haleed experiences as a threat to her freedom. When Yves later makes his consideration of her plea conditional on correcting her religious errors, Marie-Josèphe snatches up the coins and presses them into Haleed’s hands, declaring that both her prizes and her freedom belong to her. Yves storms out, but his refusal to sign has not been undone.

The distinction persists. Marie-Josèphe considers Haleed free in name even though Yves may refuse the papers that would establish that freedom in practice. At a later court gathering, Marie-Josèphe explains that Haleed chooses her own commissions. That choice gives her some control over her work, but it does not settle her legal status or guarantee safe passage home. Freedom in the sisters’ language is an ethical bond; freedom in the household’s arrangements remains something Yves can obstruct.

A Place at Court, and a Way Home

Haleed’s skill with hair and dress gives her a visible presence in court life. When James and Mary of Modena appear in white velvet covered with pearls, Marie-Josèphe recognizes Haleed’s work in the Queen’s fantastically tall headdress. The sight prompts her to think that she must find a way to return her sister home before the Queen takes her to England. The imagined danger is expressed as Marie-Josèphe’s fear, not as a stated plan by the Queen, but it shows how precarious Haleed’s movement remains even as her work attracts notice.

Lotte, too, wants more of Haleed’s time. Seeing Mary of Modena’s carriage, Lotte jokes about the Queen and asks whether Haleed can give her a few more minutes. Marie-Josèphe replies that Haleed chooses her own commissions. Soon Haleed is riding in the Queen’s carriage, bearing the Queen’s handkerchief. Marie-Josèphe feels both delight at her sister’s success and terror at the risk that accompanies it. Haleed’s place in the carriage is a genuine advancement, but it does not make her security certain; the scene keeps achievement and vulnerability together.

Jewels connect Haleed’s court work to her plan to leave. Before Marie-Josèphe is separated from Yves and Lucien and placed under guard, Haleed helps prepare her for the occasion, finishing her tall, beribboned headdress. Later, she loops a long string of jewels into Marie-Josèphe’s hair and says that she must have them back because they will buy her passage home. The pearls are therefore not merely ornament or a courtly gift. They are a portable resource for a journey Haleed hopes to make on her own terms.

Sisterhood and the Final Departure

When Marie-Josèphe is brought to Madame’s apartments under guard, Haleed drops the ribbons she is holding and embraces her without a word. Lotte joins them, and Marie-Josèphe clings to her sister and her friend. In the middle of an imposed separation from the men she cares about, Haleed’s embrace makes their relationship immediate and practical: she is present to comfort Marie-Josèphe, and soon helps her send a reply to Lucien through one of his agents. Haleed’s assistance does not remove the danger surrounding Marie-Josèphe, but it creates a brief channel for the communication the guards forbid.

Haleed later enters Marie-Josèphe’s room disguised as a scullery maid, carrying wine, bread, and cream. The disguise lets her reach her sister without appearing in her court finery. Marie-Josèphe recognizes the risk of the visit, but Haleed says she does not care: she is leaving Versailles, Paris, and France as soon as she can change her clothes. She cannot rescue Marie-Josèphe, she says; she came because she had to see her. Her departure is thus neither a triumphant escape narrated in detail nor a settled return home. It is a decision to go, made despite the sisters’ separation and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Marie-Josèphe looks at the parchment of Haleed’s manumission and grieves that she never found the moment to make Yves sign it. Haleed takes the document and insists that he will sign. The sisters’ confidence is not the same as proof that the obstacle has been removed: the story has already shown Yves withholding his signature. But Haleed does not wait for him to validate the bond she has established with Marie-Josèphe. She tells her sister that they are sisters, and the revelation about their father explains why.

Their farewell holds love and loss in the same exchange. Haleed says she does not hate their father and loves Marie-Josèphe, though she expects never to see her again; Marie-Josèphe answers that she loves Haleed too. Haleed returns some, but not all, of the pearls, invoking their promise to share their fortunes before slipping out to face an unknown fate. The jewels preserve a material connection between the women, while the words make clear that neither legal uncertainty nor distance cancels their chosen kinship.

Narrative Significance

Haleed’s arc tests the meaning of freedom against the everyday mechanisms that deny it: a household’s dependence on a servant, a brother’s refusal to sign, and the expectation that another person may decide where she belongs. Marie-Josèphe can declare her free and treat her as a sister, but she cannot simply make Yves’s authority disappear. Haleed’s insistence on her name, her faith, her chosen work, and her departure gives her agency within those limits without pretending that the limits are harmless.

Her story also alters the meaning of sisterhood in the novel. At first Marie-Josèphe’s promise to free Haleed is an act of care; the revelation about their shared father makes their bond inseparable from the exploitation that produced it. Haleed refuses both hatred of Marie-Josèphe and a passive acceptance of the life arranged for her. She leaves carrying only part of the shared pearls and the unsigned document, but the emotional fact of their kinship is not in doubt. Her ending remains uncertain in practical terms, yet decisive in its refusal to let other people’s names and permissions define the whole of her life.