Paulette Doll

Paulette Doll, one of the non-identical twin daughters of Paul Doll and Hannah Doll, is introduced as a child whose small gestures register sharply against the violence and control surrounding her household. Her story moves from the father’s demeaning judgments and the girls’ everyday attachments to a later reunion in which she appears grown, self-assured, and no longer defined by the physical features that once linked her, in her father’s eyes, to him.

Identity and Family

Paulette and Sybil Doll are twins, but not identical ones, and their different appearances matter from their first description. Sybil takes after Hannah; Paulette is several inches shorter and is described by the narrator as fulfilling the grim promise of her name. That comparison belongs to the observer’s unkind assessment, not to an objective account of Paulette’s character. The contrast establishes how readily the adults around her turn a child’s appearance into a judgment, while also distinguishing the sisters as individuals rather than treating them as a matching pair.

In childhood, Paulette is part of a close household circle that includes her mother, her sister, and people and animals around the family home. She asks Hannah for more time with Bohdan Szozeck, the Polish gardener, and Dov Cohn, Bohdan’s teenage helper, as well as with Torquil, the family tortoise. The request places her among the children gathering beneath the willow tree, in a scene of ordinary companionship whose modest pleasures stand out against the larger world of the novel. Paulette’s early life is not presented through a sustained account of her private thoughts; instead, it is glimpsed through the things she asks for, worries about, and refuses to leave behind.

Childhood Attachments and Loss

Paulette’s concern for Torquil becomes more pointed when she comes into Paul Doll’s study and asks where the tortoise is. When Doll brushes off her concern, she asks again. The repeated question makes her attachment unmistakable, even though she has little power to compel an answer from her father. Doll explains that the girls loved Torquil because, unlike the weasel, lizard, and rabbit, the tortoise could not run away. His remark describes the children’s affection, but it also casts that affection in terms of a creature’s inability to escape. The tortoise’s stillness is comforting to the girls and, in Doll’s telling, a condition that makes it available to them.

That attachment reappears when the girls grieve over Meinrad, a sick animal whom the Equestrian Academy will not take back. Doll proposes selling him as scrap, and reports that Sybil and Paulette respond with loud distress and spend much of their time in his filthy lean-to, stroking him as he lies panting on his side. His account makes their response a nuisance, but its concrete details show care that persists even when the animal is ill and the adults have begun discussing disposal. Paulette is not given an independent speech in this episode, yet her presence among the girls who remain beside Meinrad reveals a capacity for attachment that her father’s account tends to reduce to childish noise.

Under Paul Doll’s Gaze

Doll repeatedly frames Paulette through a hierarchy of power. In his private reflection on his household, he imagines restoring order by beating Hannah, but concedes that he cannot do so because she is too physically formidable. He then sets Paulette against Alisz Seisser, describing both as unthreatening and presenting Paulette as a child who knows her place and retreats when he glowers. The comparison is revealing less as a reliable measure of Paulette’s temperament than as evidence of Doll’s perspective: he assesses the women and girls around him according to whether they can resist his authority.

The domestic scenes complicate that account without turning Paulette into a figure of open rebellion. She approaches her father in his study to ask about Bohdan and Torquil; elsewhere, when asked about her birthday, she answers that it is years away. These are small exchanges, but they give her concerns and sense of time their own place in the household. Doll can dismiss her dress, minimize her requests, or characterize her as compliant, yet the narrative also lets the reader see what his dismissals leave out: her connections to other people and animals, and the persistence with which she asks after what matters to her.

Growth and Reunion

Years later, Paulette appears with Hannah and Sybil in a crowded public square. Angelus Thomsen recognizes the family by their configuration: a mother and two daughters in straw hats, carrying straw bags and dressed in white. The sight sends him after them. His recognition is at first bound to the family grouping and the girls’ remembered childhood, but the encounter quickly makes clear how much time has passed. He remarks on the five-year span from thirteen to eighteen and says Paulette has changed particularly. She has grown five or six inches; the features that once recalled the Commandant—the long upper lip and staring nostrils—no longer define her appearance in his eyes. His comment is affectionate, but it also shows how the remembered child is being measured against a new adult presence.

The reunion gathers around a small pleasure from the girls’ earlier lives. Thomsen teases them that they are too old and too tall for ice cream. Sybil rejects the idea of being too old, and Paulette joins in to reject being too tall. He buys them banana splits at the Grand, while Hannah eventually accepts orange juice and Thomsen orders schnapps. The scene gives Paulette a voice in the family’s shared insistence that growing up need not mean surrendering every childhood pleasure. Her answer is brief, but it meets the teasing on equal terms, unlike the earlier scenes in which her father’s judgments set the terms of conversation.

Family Life and Narrative Significance

The later encounter also shows the circumstances of Hannah’s life and Paulette’s continuing place within the family. Hannah explains that she is doing more for her parents as her mother’s hips and father’s heart cause difficulties; she teaches conversational French for five hours a week, cannot teach written French because of her dyslexia, and says that her main work is raising the girls. At the pond, Paulette and Sybil appear at the far end and stop to check on their mother. Hannah waves, the twins wave back, and they drift away again. Their brief exchange presents care as reciprocal: Hannah raises them, and the now older daughters keep an eye on her.

Thomsen tells Hannah that the twins like him and says he has always liked them. He offers to become a friend of the family, travel down by train from time to time, and take them all to lunch. In this late scene, Paulette is no longer merely the child glimpsed through Doll’s household authority. She is one of the young women whose shared history enables a reunion, yet whose growth also makes clear that the past cannot simply be restored. Across the contrast between the child asking after a tortoise and the young woman insisting she is not too tall for ice cream, the novel gives her development through concrete changes in body, family circumstance, and the terms on which she can answer other people.