Love and Sacrifice in Dana Schwartz's Immortality

Love and Sacrifice: Thematic Analysis

In Immortality, Dana Schwartz weaves a dark historical fantasy where love demands the ultimate sacrifice: identity, mortality, and security. The novel’s central claim is that genuine love cannot coexist with self-preservation—each character must strip away what defines them to forge a future with the person they cherish. This thematic claim plays out across three pivotal plot threads: Hazel Sinnett’s elaborate scheme to fake Princess Charlotte’s death, Jack Currer’s renunciation of the Tincture’s promise, and Charlotte’s willingness to abandon her throne. By tracing these sacrifices through character arcs and symbols, the novel reveals both the transcendence and the haunting cost of devotion.

Sacrificing Identity: Hazel and Charlotte

When Hazel Sinnett learns that Princess Charlotte and her lover Eliza are desperate to be together, she devises a dangerous plan: stage the Princess’s death and replace her with a look-alike corpse. This requires Hazel to sacrifice her own reputation as a royal surgeon. If the ruse fails, she faces execution for treason. Yet Hazel proceeds, because she sees in Charlotte and Eliza the same longing she feels for Jack. The plan forces Charlotte to give up her title, her family, and her entire identity as the heir to the throne. In a quiet moment at a concert, Hazel asks Eliza if Charlotte would truly be willing to give everything up. Eliza confirms it is their decade-long fantasy. By engineering the deception, Hazel sacrifices her professional security and the respect of the medical establishment—a sacrifice she later justifies by claiming Charlotte died of a fictional Alpine blood disorder. The marigold dress Charlotte wears symbolizes the public role she discards; the dress is a costume of royalty, left behind when she flees. Similarly, Hazel abandons her blue dress when she decides to stay with Jack, shedding the visible markers of her former life.

Sacrificing Mortality: Jack and Hazel

Jack Currer, resurrected from hanging by the Tincture of immortality, faces a cruel paradox: he can live forever, but only by watching everyone he loves grow old and die. His greatest sacrifice is renouncing the Tincture’s promise—not by refusing it, but by desperately wanting to be mortal again. When he and Hazel reunite in a graveyard, he tells her, “I won’t be able to give you the life you deserve.” He walks away from her, convinced that his immortality is a curse that will only bring her pain. This sacrifice is an act of love: he gives up the joy of being with her to spare her future grief. The tincture of immortality thus becomes a symbol of both gift and burden. Later, Hazel reverses the sacrifice by secretly drinking the Tincture after their wedding. She chooses to become immortal herself so they can face eternity together. Jack is furious—he wanted her to find a cure—but he ultimately accepts her choice. The moment embodies the novel’s core: love requires giving up control over life and death. The missing pinkie finger harvested by the Companions to the Death represents the cost of joining their immortal society; Hazel refuses to cut off her finger, symbolizing her refusal to sacrifice her autonomy for eternal life. Yet by taking the Tincture, she sacrifices her mortality in a way no ritual can undo.

Sacrificing Security: Charlotte and the King’s Recovery

Princess Charlotte’s sacrifice is perhaps the most tangible: she abandons her position as the only legitimate heir to the British throne. This is not a spontaneous decision but a culmination of years of longing. The novel shows King George III’s recovery and his public appearance with Queen Charlotte after years of madness. Witnessing their love—a “real love match” that endured sixty years—makes Hazel realize that love can survive time and hardship. Yet Charlotte’s own parents, the Prince Regent and his estranged wife, are trapped in a bitter marriage. Charlotte chooses love over duty, sacrificing the wealth, power, and security of royalty. The arsenic-laced green wallpaper hidden in the palace symbolizes the toxic environment she escapes: a court full of deception and slow poison. Her sacrifice is complicated because it is also an act of self-preservation—she escapes a forced marriage to a foreign prince. The novel thus treats sacrifice as both altruistic and self-interested, a blurring of motives that makes the theme more realistic.

The Complexity and Contradiction of Sacrifice

Not all sacrifices in Immortality are noble or successful. Marie-Anne Lavoisier, a brilliant chemist centuries old, sacrificed her humanity in pursuit of scientific legacy. She attempts to murder Hazel out of fear that abandoning medical work will expose the Companions. Her sacrifice of empathy for immortality leaves her a mere head, trapped and isolated. Dr. William Beecham sacrificed ethics for power, framing Jack for murder and harvesting bodies for his experiments. His motivation was self-preservation, not love. The novel shows that sacrifice must serve connection, not control. Even Hazel’s ultimate sacrifice—becoming immortal—is tinged with ambiguity. She loses the chance to grow old naturally, to experience a human lifespan. The epilogue reveals she and Jack live for centuries, but the final excerpt from her treatise describes a fake deadly disorder to cover their secret. Their love endures, but at the cost of authenticity. The marigold dress reappears in the epilogue as the women arrive at a German castle in mourning clothes, yet giddy. The dress originally worn by Charlotte as a symbol of royalty now literally discarded, replaced by grief garments that hide joy. Sacrifice in this novel is never clean; it always leaves a scar.

Study Questions

1. How does Hazel’s decision to fake Princess Charlotte’s death represent a sacrifice of her professional identity, and what does this reveal about her values?
   Answer: Hazel risks her hard-won reputation as the first female royal surgeon. If caught, she would face execution, nullifying her life’s work. This shows that Hazel values love and freedom (both Charlotte’s and her own) above professional achievement. Her willingness to lie about the cause of death—inventing “Alpine blood disorder”—demonstrates that she places human connection over scientific transparency.

2. Why does Jack initially refuse to be with Hazel despite both of them being alive? How does his sacrifice of companionship relate to his definition of love?
   Answer: Jack believes that loving someone means protecting them from future pain. By staying away, he sacrifices the immediate joy of being with Hazel to spare her the grief of watching him remain young while she ages. This self-imposed exile is his way of loving her “better.” He only relents when she becomes immortal, eliminating that source of pain.

3. In what ways does Charlotte’s decision to abandon the throne complicate the theme of sacrifice? Is it purely altruistic, or does it also serve her self-interest?
   Answer: Charlotte sacrifices her title and security, but she also escapes a forced political marriage to a foreign prince—a marriage that would have trapped her. Her sacrifice is thus both for love (to be with Eliza) and for personal freedom. The novel suggests that sacrifice is rarely pure; it often aligns with what one secretly desires.

4. How does the symbol of the missing pinkie finger contrast with Hazel’s refusal to cut off her finger? What does this say about the cost of immortality versus the cost of love?
   Answer: The Companions require a sacrifice of body (the pinkie finger) as a toll for entering their immortal society. Hazel refuses, preserving her surgical dexterity. Yet she later sacrifices her entire mortality by taking the Tincture. The contrast shows that true sacrifice cannot be a ritualistic payment; it must be a personal, willing surrender of something essential. Hazel gives up her human lifespan, not just a finger.

5. Marie-Anne Lavoisier sacrifices her body and ultimately her humanity for science. How does her fate comment on the novel’s view of sacrificial love versus sacrificial ambition?
   Answer: Marie-Anne’s sacrifice is driven by ambition to preserve knowledge and extend her scientific work indefinitely. She ends up a disembodied head, unable to participate in the world she wished to shape. The novel implies that sacrifice for love (as Hazel and Jack practice) preserves relationship and agency, while sacrifice for abstract ambition leads to isolation. Marie-Anne’s tragedy is that she gave up too much for too little.

For further exploration, visit our character pages on Hazel Sinnett, Jack Currer, Marie-Anne Lavoisier, Princess Charlotte, and Simon von Ferris. Also examine key symbols like the tincture of immortality, the missing pinkie finger, and the arsenic-laced green wallpaper.