In Tender Is the Night, Dick and Nicole Diver’s yacht is named Rosine. The yacht belongs to the glamorous expatriate world surrounding the Divers on the French Riviera, where the novel opens and where appearances of wealth, health, and happiness conceal deep personal instability.
The Divers are central figures in Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel. Dick is a talented American psychiatrist, while Nicole is his wealthy patient and later his wife. Their marriage initially appears enviable: they host sophisticated gatherings, travel among fashionable resorts, and attract younger figures such as actress Rosemary Hoyt. Behind that polished surface, however, Dick’s career and self-confidence deteriorate, while Nicole gradually gains independence.
Rosine is easy to confuse with the names of characters and places in the novel, especially Nicole, who is one half of the married couple, or with vessels and luxury settings associated with other Fitzgerald works. Tender Is the Night was serialized in four parts before its book publication, and its title comes from John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.”