Nineteenth-century fiction holds an enduring fascination, often inviting modern reinterpretations. Such is the case with The French Nursemaid, which rewrites a great classic novel: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Here, the protagonist is a young French girl. The novel falls essentially into two parts.

The first is set in Paris. Sophie is an impoverished child who lost her father during the glorious days of 1830, which brought Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, to power. Through workers’ mutual aid societies, Sophie learned to read and write, advancing from a “Bear” to a “Monkey”—terms that, in the vernacular of printshop laborers, distinguish the illiterate, fit only for manual tasks, from those educated enough to be entrusted with typesetting. Reading great novels, newspapers, and periodicals secures Sophie a social role within her modest community and, above all, fires her imagination while elevating her ideals and aspirations. This is the finest portion of the book, as the author diverges from much nineteenth-century fiction by embracing a realist, Zolaesque approach rather than a pious, sentimental one. Sophie loses her mother as well, but fortuitously finds shelter with a celebrated actress, Céline, who is married—or rather, believes herself married—to the villainous Edward Rochester. Sophie becomes both nursemaid and companion to Adèle, the couple’s daughter. In Céline’s household, Sophie meets a Black youth, Tùssi, and Céline’s godfather, an elderly French Enlightenment thinker. The author uses this eccentric aristocrat to articulate her ideal school: one where learning is inquiry, open equally to rich and poor without class distinction. Because Tùssi is still legally an enslaved person, this also provides an occasion to address slavery and colonial conditions, though it must be noted that this theme, which tormented the entire nineteenth century, is handled superficially, striking a forced and discordant note throughout the novel. Céline’s fortunes, and by extension Sophie’s, unravel abruptly upon the godfather’s death: grasping relatives have Céline imprisoned and turn Sophie and Adèle out into the street. Tùssi is forced into domestic servitude with one of the relatives. One might expect the wealthy Rochester to intervene; instead, this callous and self-absorbed man reveals that his marriage to Céline was an orchestrated sham and carries Adèle off, even as he disowns her as his daughter. In the second part, the setting shifts to England and the somber manor of Thornfield. Sophie manages to follow Adèle, securing employment as her French nursemaid by pretending not to understand English. This device allows her to recount, from her own vantage point, the narrative of Charlotte Brontë’s masterwork. Needless to say, the story draws to a happy ending for our protagonists, who eventually reunite in France, their fortunes restored once Céline claims the legitimate inheritance left by her godfather.

A distinctive feature of the novel is its narrative structure. In the first part, the letters Sophie and Tùssi write to Céline, already behind bars, are juxtaposed with a third-person account of Sophie’s circumstances up to her departure for England. It is a device that enlivens the prose, effectively balancing three viewpoints: the authorial voice and the inner reflections of the two main characters. In the second part, the epistolary mode takes precedence. The correspondence between Sophie and Tùssi chronicles the happenings at Thornfield. It must be said, however, that this narrative device becomes repetitive and dull, not least because the letters possess so little intimacy or genuine emotion. Confronted with detached, formal accounts of the plot, the reader is left disappointed, expecting the two protagonists to probe their feelings and finally declare the love of which we are certain from the outset. In the final pages, Sophie assumes the role of first-person narrator, yet the text never rises above a perfunctory chronicle of events.

The novel is plainly an amalgamation of nineteenth-century narrative conventions. The reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s work is trite, mirroring an overly romanticized and conventional reading of Jane Eyre. What weighs the story down most heavily is a sluggish narrative pace, a dearth of action, and an absence of psychological depth in the characters. An encouraging start soon gives way to mounting tedium.

Why not read it? It is long and boring.

The French Nanny