Characters Tourist Season Enid Shomer

Helen in Tourist Season: A Character Analysis of Transformation, Invisibility, and Escape

Overview

Helen is a sixty-four-year-old former high school teacher and aspiring anthropologist who appears in Chapter 10, “Laws of Nature,” of Enid Shomer’s linked story collection Tourist Season. She is the wife of Claude, mother of Gregory, and grandmother of Evan and Little Helen. The story traces her startling physical de-aging—her body grows younger, her hair darkens, her menstrual cycle resumes—and culminates in the growth of a wolf’s tail, prompting her to abandon her human life entirely. Helen’s arc is one of radical release: she moves from social invisibility as an older woman to a literal metamorphosis that frees her from loss, betrayal, and the constraints of human relationships. Her story intertwines themes of aging, identity, secrets, marriage, and travel as metaphor.

Plot Role

Helen is the protagonist and point-of-view character in “Laws of Nature.” While the collection as a whole weaves together multiple women’s stories, Helen’s chapter stands alone as a self-contained narrative of magical realism. Her transformation drives every event in the chapter: Claude’s growing unease, his affair with his secretary Glenda, his abandonment letter, Helen’s decision to visit Gregory in Seattle, and her final, irreversible change into a wolf-like creature. Her role is to embody the emotional costs of aging and marital betrayal, and to suggest an alternative—a literal escape hatch from human pain.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Helen’s motivations shift as her body changes. Initially, she is motivated by curiosity and a quiet sense of well-being: she notices she looks younger and begins to enjoy her restored energy. She takes up tennis again, buys a slinky dress, and feels a “cannonball” impulse to celebrate rather than worry about her transformation (Evidence chapter-0010-chunk-0005). She demonstrates resilience and defiance by throwing away the psychiatrist’s referral her doctor offers.

As Claude withdraws, she seeks his attention. She observes that after forty years of marriage they have become a “boardinghouse” couple—emotionally separate and silent. When Claude fails to acknowledge her changes, she tries to be seen by wearing a sparkling dress to a martini club outing (Evidence chapter-0010-chunk-0005). Her motivation here is to reclaim recognition from her husband.

After Claude’s letter confessing his affair and departure, Helen’s motivation shifts to acceptance and letting go. She cries for days, then decides to visit her son. In her final phone call to Gregory, she calmly explains her transformation and prepares Evan with a code word “waffles” to preserve their bond. Her actions reveal a pragmatic tenderness and a willingness to mourn without fighting. When the tail sprouts, she strokes it “absently, then proudly” and embraces leaving her human life behind, suggesting a deep, unspoken readiness to shed the weight of human expectations (Evidence chapter-0010-chunk-0007).

Key traits: observant (she notes the missing men in her life, the cultural irony of development), intellectually curious (she is earning a PhD in anthropology despite being past retirement), proud of her mind, resilient after heartbreak, and capable of profound detachment. She is also ironic: she jokes about “fake French” on menus and muses about being put out on the ice like an Eskimo elder.

Chronological Arc

Helen’s arc proceeds in clear stages:

  1. Discovery of de-aging – After a dream of riding a swan, she wakes looking rested and younger. She ambushes herself in mirrors throughout the week.
  2. Physical and social changes – Her hair darkens, figure firms, eyesight improves, she menstruates again. Others comment, and she feels both joy and outrage at being seen now when she was invisible before.
  3. Claude’s withdrawal – He is appalled by her period, gives generic apologies, and eventually leaves a letter confessing he cannot cope with her changes and has been having an affair with his secretary, Glenda.
  4. Grief and decision – She cries for a week, then plans a trip to Seattle to see Gregory, Susan, and the grandchildren.
  5. Final transformation – The night before her flight, a wolf tail sprouts. She acknowledges the tail’s independent life, strokes it, and prepares to leave. The narration shifts into a farewell to family and to human life itself.

Relationships

Claude – Their forty-year marriage is built on emotional separation. Claude respects her independence but fails to truly see her. He hires an attorney who is “bilingual and quite beautiful,” a forewarning of the affair. When Helen de-ages, Claude cannot accept it; he leaves for an older woman (Glenda), ironically choosing the familiar over the transformed. Their relationship illustrates how a long marriage can be both a comfort and a cage.

Gregory, Susan, and the grandchildren – Helen’s son is initially supportive (“incredible” he says), yet she senses the underlying insult in their compliments about how “young” she looks—it implies how old and invisible she was before. She connects warmly with Evan, using a code word to reassure him she is still “Big Helen.” Little Helen, the granddaughter, evokes the creepy feeling of being replaced.

Benita – The longtime housekeeper is the only person who accepts the transformation without shock. She relates folklore about older Mexican women turning into pigs or wolves. Benita’s calm, matter‑of‑fact attitude provides narrative permission for the magical realism: in her culture, such changes “happen all the time” (Evidence chapter-0010-chunk-0004).

Glenda – Though never seen directly by Helen, Glenda is the “older woman” with whom Claude has an affair. The irony deepens: Helen has become younger, yet Claude leaves her for a woman his own age. Glenda’s existence shatters Helen’s assumption of marital stability.

Key Decisions and Consequences

  • Decision to not see a psychiatrist. She throws away the referral. Consequence: she avoids medicalizing her experience and instead fully inhabits her transformation.
  • Decision to buy a sexy dress and attend the martini club outing. It forces Claude to acknowledge her changes but also precipitates his confession of unhappiness.
  • Decision to tell her son about the de-aging. She prepares the family honestly, which allows her to maintain a connection with Evan through the code word.
  • Decision to leave her human life after the tail grows. She writes a note and check to Benita, purchases a plane ticket, and mentally says farewell to family lines, graduations, and nesting. Consequence: she embraces a predatory, solitary existence—no longer subject to human grief or the “prickly love” of human mothers.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Invisibility and Aging

Before her change, Helen felt invisible—a student dumped dishes at her table, classmates ignored her comments in grad school. The transformation reverses this: suddenly she is stared at, complimented, but also resented. The wolf tail symbolizes final rejection of social invisibility; a wild animal cannot be ignored.

Identity and Transformation

Helen is literally becoming someone else. Her name “Helen” is shared with her granddaughter, and she feels that “Big Helen” no longer fits. The change blurs the line between self and other, human and animal. It raises questions: Is she still Helen? The narration says her thoughts remain those of a sixty-four-year-old woman, but her body and instincts are turning wolf. This echoes the collection’s overarching theme of identity as mutable.

Marriage and Relationships

The marriage is a “boardinghouse”—functional but emotionally sparse. Claude’s affair and abandonment suggest that radical personal change can destroy even stable long-term relationships. Helen’s decision to leave without fighting also ends the marriage, but in her case it becomes liberation.

Secrets and Guilt

While Helen carries no overt secret, Claude’s hidden affair is a secret that eventually surfaces. The chapter explores how unspoken truths corrode intimacy. Helen’s transformation itself is a kind of secret she tries to hide with lies about stem cell treatments, but she is forced to reveal it.

Travel and Tourism as Metaphor

Helen plans a trip to Seattle, but her journey is more than geographic. She becomes a “tourist” in her own life, observing her younger self as an outsider. The chapter title “Laws of Nature” implies that her metamorphosis is as natural as the biological laws she once studied as an anthropologist. The collection’s title Tourist Season suggests that people often pass through their own lives as if on vacation—temporary, detached, and ultimately moving on.

Questions and Answers

  1. Why does Helen grow a wolf tail instead of turning into a different animal or staying human?
    The narrative associates wolves with freedom from emotional entanglement. Benita’s folklore mentions wolves and pigs as common transformations for older women in her village. Helen’s tail responds “as if it had a mind and heart of its own,” suggesting a wild, instinctual life that contrasts with the domestic and social constraints she is leaving behind.

  2. Does Helen have control over her de-aging, or is it involuntary?
    The story presents the transformation as involuntary and organic—she notices it happening, she does not will it. She cannot stop it or adjust its pace. However, once the tail appears, she actively chooses to accept it and leave her human life. The change is both a mysterious natural event and a catalyst for a conscious decision to depart.

  3. Why does Claude leave Helen if she is becoming younger and more attractive?
    Claude cannot accept the radical, uncanny change. He says he “sees a stranger” and feels older by comparison. He also has been having an affair with Glenda, suggesting his emotional ties had already shifted. Helen’s youthfulness makes him feel insecure rather than delighted; his departure is an act of self‑protection, not rejection of her beauty.

  4. What is the significance of Benita’s stories about pig‑women and wolf‑women?
    Benita’s accounts provide a cultural framework that normalizes Helen’s experience. They imply that Helen’s transformation is not unique or pathological but a recognized phenomenon in other traditions. The stories also introduce magic realism into the otherwise realistic setting, suggesting that Helen’s change is part of a larger, perhaps universal, pattern of older women slipping out of human roles.

  5. What does Helen’s farewell to her family signify about her final state of mind?
    The farewell speech reveals a mix of sorrow and relief. She feels “hollow” and mourns the loss of graduations and grandchildren, yet she celebrates the wolf’s instinctive, un‑sentimental parenting: “Wolf pups grew quickly; the dam gave her all and was pregnant again in a year or two. No wrenching departures” (Evidence chapter-0010-chunk-0007). Helen is letting go of human love’s stickiness—the tail becomes a promise of a simpler, more honest existence.

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