THE WET NURSE’S TALE

Erica Eisdorfer was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated from Duke University. She was the book reviewer for WUNC, an NPR affiliate, for eight years. Eisdorfer has managed the Bull’s Head Bookshop, the trade bookstore on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for twenty years. She lives in Carrboro with her husband and two daughters.

“I really loved this book. Erica Eisdorfer managed to completely vanish into the voice of her really appealing narrator-the plucky, somewhat randy, always sympathetic, and certainly never boring professional wet nurse, Miss Susan Rose.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“I was always a good girl.” Susan asserts at the start of the novel. Do you believe this? Does following Susan’s adventures throughout the book change your opinion?

How did her sister Ellen’s death affect Susan? Had she not died the way she did, do you think Susan’s life would have gone down a different path? 

Susan defends her affair with Master Freddie, saying “Master Freddie is not a bad man. He took advantage, yes he did. And he was wrong to do it. If I’m to be honest, though, I must confess the whole of it and that’s that I let him, didn’t I.” Do you think this is true? What do you make of Susan’s relationship with Freddie, both at the beginning and later in the novel? 

When Susan’s first son, Joey, dies, the family whose child she’s nursing gives her a gift out of guilt. Susan says “I thanked him kindly for the gift, but did not think it was enough, considering.” Is she being mercenary or sarcastic, or merely practical? Do you think she blames herself for the death of her son? Should she also blame the family she was working for? 

To what extent does Susan have to repress her emotions in order to make a living as a wet nurse? Does it seem to you like an emotionally rewarding job or a distressing one? 

How do the voices of the other narrators—the “customers” of Mrs. Rose, Susan’s mother—round out the story of wet-nursing as a profession? Which ones affected you most and why?

When Susan is raped by the coach driver and makes a deal to exchange sex for his taking her to London, she says “After I understood how to make him do as I wished, it mattered to me not at all to do as he wished. It cost me but little.” Is this another example of Susan’s ruthless practicality? What does this episode say about Susan’s attitude towards sex itself? What does it say about the times she lived in? 

When Susan schemes to get her son back from Mrs. Norval she justifies herself saying: “I would not shrink from any horrid thing at all in my mission.” Does she actually do anything “horrid”? Do you believe Susan has any pity towards the obviously ill Mrs. Norval or is her kindly treatment of the lady purely manipulative?

Would Mr. Brooks have been so quick to give David back to Susan if he had been from a rich home instead of “but a foundling?” Was he motivated purely by concern for the baby, or a desire to wash his hands of the situation? In what ways is his sending David off with Susan a reflection of the class divide in Victorian England? 

Do you think Susan will be happy in the Jewish community? Why would she prefer to find a home there instead of returning to her mother’s home in Leighton? Will she and Harry live happily ever after? What do you think is the next chapter in Susan’s tale?