The Wet Nurse's Tale
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Average rating3
15
Ratings1
Average rating3
Bright and clever with a sharp-tongued, adventurous heroine who offers a candid and often funny look at the business of nursing babies in Victorian England, this is a debut novel that will have everyone talking.Susan Rose isn't the average protagonist: she's scheming, promiscuous, plump, and she is also smart, funny, tender, and entirely lovable. Like many lower-class women of Victorian England, she was born into a world that offered very few opportunities for the poor and unlovely. But Susan is the kind of plucky heroine who seeks her fortune, and finds it . . . with some help from, well, her breasts. Susan, you see, is a professional wet nurse; she breast-feeds the children of wealthy women who can't or won't nurse their own babies.But when her own child is sold by her father and sent to a London lady who had recently lost a baby, Susan manages to convince his new foster mother, Mrs. Norbert, to hire her as a wet nurse. Once reunited with her son, Susan...
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This was an interesting book, and I had a lot of sympathy for Susan. I like that she's not a stereotypical fair damsel - how often do we get a female protagonist who's stout and strong rather than wispy and beautiful? The limits on her power are realistic and extensive, and it's genuinely dramatic seeing her work within these limitations. Again, unlike a lot of protagonists, she isn't a superhero with a trivial “flaw” - she's so poor she barely even has possessions of her own, she's illiterate, and she's under the control of her abusive father. She's also impulsive and makes some truly awful decisions.
Eisdorfer clearly did a lot of research about nursing and wet nurses, and this content seemed entirely realistic. I only wish she'd managed a stronger sense of place and time. I was genuinely confused about what time period we were in for a while, and even when it's made clear, Susan's speech and attitudes seem far too modern for her background. It's also really confusing and messes with the suspension of disbelief when she directly addresses the reader. Isn't she illiterate? Is she supposed to be telling this story to someone who's writing it down? It's never really made clear. The disorientation is made worse by the blurbs by various mothers who used a wet nurse. They just didn't seem to fit in with the story.
The other drawback for me was the pacing - the story meanders around without a clear driving plot for a while, but toward the end develops an urgent goal that inspires some improbably audacious manipulation by Susan, who spends a lot of the story in a much more passive role. Don't get me wrong - I was rooting for Susan and I like how the story ends! But I have to acknowledge that it's not terribly believable how she pulled it off.
Still, this drew me in and was a very fast read because I wanted to know what would happen to our hero. She's likable and tough, and well worth investing a few hours in.
