Code Name Hélène

“Henri Fiocca looks besotted. I am unsure how I gained the advantage in this situation, but I am determined to make the most of it. ‘If you want my company, Mr. Fiocca, you will ring me up.’”

Henri is “besotted” with Nancy from the first time he sees her. While she is attracted to him, she resists his attentions for some time. In this quote, Nancy is asserting her independence by refusing to be awed by Henri’s riches or charm. She wishes to be courted on her own terms.

“These maquisards are not formal soldiers. They are citizens, average men driven into the wilderness to escape either the Germans or the relève—the forced conscription of French nationals into the German workforce. They have left their homes and their families to make one last, desperate stand against Hitler’s invaders. I respect them, and I want to help them.”

“Maquisard” is the French term for members of the Maquis, the militia group that is part of the French Resistance against the German invasion. In this quote, Nancy expresses her sense of justice and her determination to assist in the fight, even as she knows how dangerous and “desperate” the battle will be.

“I wear my favorite armor to Luigi’s: red lipstick.”

Nancy applies her lipstick to give her confidence when going into difficult situations. Previously, this has been shown in the context of her work for the war effort, but this quote shows how she uses this same technique in her personal life, as well. Here, she applies it to give her confidence before seeing Henri for their first night out.

“Starting today, I want you to instruct your men as follows. Let them take whatever they like from the Germans. Food. Clothing. Vehicles. Lifeblood. All of that is fair game. But they are not to steal one more thing from their countrymen.”

Nancy has a strong sense of justice. It is important to her that the Maquis uphold a code of conduct, both because failing to do so could imperil their mission to defeat the Germans and because she wants them to maintain their humanity amid war. Here, she gives instructions to the Maquis leader Fournier, telling him that they are not to steal from the villages around them because then they will not support their work.

“She remembers what happened at our last meeting and is out for blood. Is desperate for it, in fact. Given the look on her face, I can see how clearly she has imagined this moment. Planned for it—which means she is likely behind this entire fiasco. So I give her a single nod. I see you, it says, and I will not be driven off.”

Nancy shows great tenacity in her work facing the Germans, but she also has courage and determination in her personal life. In this quote, she expresses her determination that Marceline will not chase her away from Henri.

“My fear is gone now. My nausea fading. All I have left is rage. This impotence is an all-consuming fury. I cannot do anything to help. I am useless. But I want revenge.”

Nancy has several interactions with Obersturmführer Wolff throughout the novel. Here, after witnessing the aftermath of his murder of the wife of a Resistance intelligence agent, she vows revenge against him. By the end of the novel, she will get her revenge by killing Wolff with her bare hands.

“We laugh at the same things and he pretends to be long-suffering about my outspokenness, but I know it delights him. He is my match and I am his and we are both well aware of this.”

Henri accepts Nancy for who she is, someone who is “outspoken” and who loves to laugh. They have a close bond, one that provides them strength even when they are separated by the war.

“I am Australian to the bone. And yes, I have taken on a second life as a Parisienne. France is my home now. But there are the moments when a woman returns to her roots, and the voice of my monarch reminds me that I am, and always will be, a member of the British Empire.”

Nancy moves expertly between different worlds, which is one of her strengths. She has learned the rules of being a “Parisienne,” a woman from Paris, but when she hears King George’s address after the declaration of war, she feels a swell of patriotic pride that solidifies her desire to contribute to the fight against the Nazis.

“You have plotted to murder me in my sleep. You have turned me out of your château when you thought I was useless. You have attempted to steal my weapons at my drop zone. And you have taken a routine interrogation to the most inhuman, barbaric extreme. Say one rash word and you will never receive so much as a pair of toenail clippers from me.”

Nancy has just seen Roger le Neveu after Gaspard and Judex torture him. She is outraged at their “inhuman” behavior. However, she does not lose her nerve until she is out of their sight, instead disciplining them for their behavior with the threat of withdrawing material support.

“Henri Fiocca has in fact never courted a woman before Nancy. And at first, he did not seduce her because he kept getting her drunk. Then he realized there was something exquisitely erotic about the anticipation. It’s not that he hasn’t wanted her. He has ached from it. But this longing and need have created two things he has never experienced before: intimacy and trust.”

Before meeting Nancy, Henri is a playboy who is constantly chasing shallow pleasures. After meeting Nancy, he no longer has an interest in superficial women like Marceline. Nancy and Henri wait to have sex until marriage, which builds their “intimacy and trust.”

“Poor Henri. He does not realize that I am serious, or how determined Germany is to spread its cancer across the face of the earth. I saw what they did in Vienna and Berlin, and I know that Hitler has no intentions of stopping at Belgium.

If Henri is going to war, so am I.”

Typically, in wartime, the men go off to fight while the women stay home. Henri and Nancy’s relationship is different in that they both contribute to the battle against the German invasion. As she describes here, she is in part inspired by the atrocities she witnessed as a reporter in Berlin and Vienna.

“The thing about lipstick, the reason it’s so powerful, is that it is distracting. Men don’t see the flashes of anger in your eyes or your clenched fists when you wear it. They see a woman, not a warrior, and that gives me the advantage. I cannot throw a decent punch or carry a grown man across a battlefield, but I can wear red lipstick as though my life depends on it. And the truth is, these days, it often does.”

Nancy uses men’s attraction to her, facilitated by her lipstick, to her advantage. Often, she will flirt with guards or officers to get through checkpoints or get information that she needs. She uses men’s sexism against her as a means to overcome the limitations they try to place on her.

“I want everything to stop. I want everyone to leave. I would pause time if I could, anything for a few more precious moments together. But there is no more sand in the hourglass.”

Nancy is devastated when Henri leaves for the front. One of the greatest sacrifices that Nancy and Henri make during the war is giving up time together. Nevertheless, their love for each other is also their greatest strength.

“Honestly, I’m so tired of this bullshit. I can’t have a byline because I’m a woman. I can’t apply for a marriage license on my own because I’m a woman. I can’t drive an ambulance because I’m a woman.”

Nancy swears liberally as an expression of her strong emotions. She is highly independent, and she finds the restrictions placed on women in her society ridiculous. She refuses to accept them and, in this instance, argues her way into becoming an ambulance driver, Overcoming the Sexist Expectations of Women.

“I am always a little startled to find my countrymen maintaining any kind of normalcy in the face of war. I respect it. It is one of a thousand courageous ways of thumbing your nose at the enemy.”

Nancy recognizes that not everyone is going to fight for the Resistance as she does. In this quote, she expresses approval of those who manage to keep living in the face of the devastation of war as a form of resistance itself.

“Nancy Wake—no, Henri reminds himself, Nancy Fiocca—is the kind of woman who conquers the world. Fearless. Ferocious. Nancy is the sort of woman who bathes in a meteor shower. She is not the kind of woman who concedes to anyone.”

One of the reasons Henri loves Nancy is because she is strong and independent, unlike the stereotypical gender roles of their day. In this quote, he describes her approvingly as “[f]erocious” and willing to face down any danger.

“I’ve never been all that good at being a girl. A woman, yes. I’ve developed that skill in spades. But girlishness is a luxury I was never afforded as a child or a young woman. I had to grow up quickly. I had to adapt. But the older I get, the more I am brought up short by simple luxuries and basic acts of kindness. Especially here, in this place.”

Throughout the war, Nancy loves the small treats that make her life just a little more comfortable. Things that would be taken for granted during peacetime—such as, in this case, a mattress provided to her by Tardivat—become signs of love and friendship.

“This is what our farewells have become of late. Desperate attempts to say everything in case we never have the chance again. It’s like heaving my own heart into an open volcano. I am doing this to myself. To him. I am choosing a life that has me teetering on the edge of disaster.”

Nancy and Henri’s partings never become easier. In this quote, she recognizes how her decision to work as a smuggler has put them both at risk and may separate them for good. It is a painful sacrifice she is making to support the greater Resistance effort.

“He kisses me firmly on the lips. There is nothing sensual about it. This is not the sort of kiss he would use to seduce me. This is an emotional kiss. Urgent and terrified. The sort of kiss a man gives his wife when he’s going off to war. But I am the one leaving.”

This quote describes the last kiss Henri gives her before she leaves to fight for the Resistance, and he is captured and killed by the Vichy police. Nancy emphasizes how the stereotypical gender roles, wherein she would stay, and he would leave to fight, are reversed in their relationship.

“I was never violent before the war—had never harmed so much as a spider. Something has shifted in me, however. It is deep and primal and fearful. I am no longer afraid to use my own hands to render justice. I am no longer afraid. My capacity for hate has also grown. It is deep and virulent toward the Germans and all who serve them. I am no longer a nice person. But I do not lose sleep over it.”

The war changes Nancy’s personality. Before the war, she was carefree and footloose, and she did not pay close attention to politics. Her experience of the war has hardened her. Where before the war she was “nice”—a highly gendered term most often applied to women—the war wears away her softness, and she does not miss it.

“I want to go back to France because my husband is there. Because half my friends are there. My dog is there. Because the damn Nazis have turned it into a hellhole, and I can’t live with the idea that they could do the same with the rest of the world.”

Despite being Australian, Nancy feels strongly that France is her home. After her SOE training, she is determined to return to her home to liberate it from the Nazis.

“I am startled by the way his neck flattens, and how he begins to claw at his Adam’s apple. The simplicity of it is breathtaking.”

Using the training in hand-to-hand combat provided to her by Denis Rake, Nancy kills Obersturmführer Wolff with her bare hands, crushing his windpipe so he suffocates. Instead of feeling fear or remorse, she simply describes the experience as, pun intended, “breathtaking.” This is a sign of how much her experience of the war and her espionage training has changed her.

“They turn sharply on their heels and stand at attention. There is one last trumpet blast, then every man before me raises his hand in salute. It is a show of respect. Of honor. Deference. They are acknowledging, one and all, that I am their leader.”

Nancy initially has trouble getting the men to respect her. After working alongside the men in the Maquis for months, they grow to appreciate her talents. On her birthday, at the end of the war, she achieves the final step of Overcoming Sexist Expectations of Women, as they assemble to salute her in a demonstration of their respect for her leadership.