LA BAMBINAIA FRANCESE (THE FRENCH NURSEMAID) by BIANCA PITZORNO (2004)

If you,  like me,  have always loved Mr Rochester, maybe you won't love this book. But , to be honest, I  must say this is such a well written novel that its author must be forgiven. In "La Bambinaia Francese", Bianca Pitzorno has turned Rochester, my Mr Rochester , into a horrible, wicked,  unbearable character. Better to tell you the whole truth: in this story he is a racist, a class system supporter,  a misogynist as well as a grumpy, violent man with no hope for redemption.

But, though suffering for my Mr Rochester, I must also add that being very good, very well written,   this novel should be translated into English so that the many fans of Charlotte Bronte's  "Jane Eyre" might have the possibility to evaluate this original outlook on their favourite hero and heroine. 
The Plot

The story takes place in Paris in 1832 On a winter evening Sophie, 9 years old, knocks at Céline Verens’s dooor. Céline is the étoile at Paris opera house. The little girl wants to deliver the shirts her mother sewed in the humble attic they lived in at Montmartre. It’s the beginning of a close friendship between the dancer and the poor orphan . Through the years Sophie becomes the favourite pupil of an old enlighted noble man who survived the French Revolution and the following disillusionment  of the Empire and the Restoration.

In the school run by this man, who is curiously called Citizen Marquis Sophie the most extravagant and miscellaneous group of pupils, but her favourite one is Haitian Toussaint, a little black slave given to her benefactress  Céline by her lover , an English  gentleman , Eduard  Rochester.
 Together, Toussaint (Tussì)  and  Sophie grow up  and learn the importance of education, knowledge, reading and writing as well as  the respect for the others , all of them, whatever is their origin, race and class. Together they face every kind of dangerous adventure, first in France then in England, to save their  protector from their persecutors and  and little Adéle, her daughter, from the disquieting mysteries of Thornfield Hall. 

The latest Jane Eyre: Mia Wasikowska

 
A book full of books

Bianca Pitzorno wrote that this novel was the result of her personal reflections of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847) that she read and loved when she was 15. She said she wished to re-write it from a different point of view since she noticed some incongruences, though she considered it a real masterpiece : the proud, obstinate, independent little girl Jane, after fighting to survive at Lowood School , becomes a cold, detached governess to little Adèle. Then she didn't like theprotrait of little Adéle as  frivolous and shallow .

But this is a book full of ... books.  To prepare to the task of writing her "La bambinaia francese",  she read and researched a lot. Her main sources were all Charlotte Bronte's works, especially Jane Eyre and Villette. But also The Great Sargasso Sea.

In this novel you'll also find a bit of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Mary Wollstonecraft's ideals on women's rights and , her dauther's (Mary Shelley) original Gothic novel, Frankenstein. Ms Pitzorno also declares she freely  borrowed characters from Dickens's Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities. 

And then , many essays from Rousseau and about slavery, on children's educaton in 19th century. 

I'm afraid many of you won't be able to read this book.  We'd need a publisher interested in a good translation! It has only been published in Italian!