HISTORY
Just a child during WWI, Sylvie grew up in an environment marked heavily by nationalistic and religious tendencies. At the same time, her own family was split over the issue of belief, since her father was a non-believer, while her mother believed strongly in the doctrines of the Catholic church. She went to school at a convent and was taught by nuns, but would eventually lose her own faith as she grew older and recognised the dilemmas and ethical difficulties of evil and adversity.
It may also have had something to do with her feelings for her best friend, Andrée Gallard.
The two girls had met at school when Sylvie was ten and struck up a slightly formal, but deep-felt friendship that made many of the grown-ups around them both wonder and worry. It was thought that they didn't have a good influence on each other, but for Sylvie, Andrée was all that mattered in the world. Her happiness, her larger than life spirit... These things became the axes of Sylvie's Earth.
Therefore, it was also a great sorrow for her to observe how Andrée's life would evolve into captivity and uncertainty as her mother expected her to follow in her footsteps and marry young, no matter whether she loved the man or not.
At age 15, Sylvie had admitted her feelings for Andrée, who was at the time grieving the loss of her first boyfriend who was leaving France, but the matter would never be touched upon again between them. Instead, as they entered university, Andrée began putting emotional, if not physical distance between them and found other friends, other interests. They were still close, but they both recognised that something had been lost that night in Andrée's family's country house kitchen.
At the same time, Sylvie introduced her friend, Pascal, to Andrée who was immediately attracted to him. Trying, once again, to support Andrée's quest for happiness, she encouraged the relationship and tried helping to convince Andrée's mother of their feelings. But Andrée's mother wanted an assurance of Pascal's intentions and insisted they got engaged, something he was not willing to do.
Miserable and heart-broken, Andrée prepared to be sent to England on an educational trip, but shortly before her leave, she became acutely ill and died. At her funeral, her casket had been smothered in white flowers of purity, the same attitude that had in the end killed her, so Sylvie left three red roses amidst all the white and would mourn the loss of her friend for the rest of her life.
PERSONALITY
Sylvie is very intelligent, at school she was the best in her class, continuously, although Andrée came a close second. She takes an interest in philosophy and is studying this at the Sorbonne. Although she was a firm believer as a child, she has since lost her faith and thinks of herself as a non-believer who ascribes more to logic and sound thinking than to doctrine and miracles. She's straight-forward, though polite, and says things as they are, never allowing anyone to hide too much behind their words. She is not afraid to ask the tough questions.
Although she knows everything about sex on a practical level, Sylvie is somewhat innocent and un-educated about the passion that people share which makes them sleep with each other. Beyond her infatuation with Andrée, she doesn't take any interest in others like that. Sex is more a matter of bodily release and satisfaction than human intimacy to her, though she no doubt longs for such a union with Andrée, too. Deep down. Deep down, but close enough to the surface that the two of them keep a certain distance in their interaction.
Observant, Sylvie has many thoughts on her contemporary society, from religious observance and control to the place of women in 1920's France, to family ties and relations, her own and those of others. She is saddened by the state of things and feels powerless to change much, if anything about it, settling with just trying to support her friends and claim her own space.
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