Book - The Wet Nurse's Tale

Erica Eisdorfer has written a lovely novel about the life of a wet nurse in Victorian England. Susan Rose is a bawdy scullery maid who ends up becoming a wet nurse after an unexpected pregnancy. Susan faces many heart-breaking challenges, but faces them all dead-on with vigor, spunk, and a tremendous amount of cunning. She acknowledges when she's acting immorally, but always provides a sympathetic excuse. As a Gypsy once told her, "you'll see to yourself, girl." Read on for more.




Eisdorfer's book provides a welcome glimpse into the world of nursing babies. I don't think you'd have to have the experience in order to find these passages charming, although the fact that I was actively breastfeeding my own baby while reading the story probably enhanced my perception of the novel.

The novel is interrupted periodically with little vignettes of women's reasons for giving their children over to a wet nurse (all of them customers of Susan's mother, a woman who wet nursed well into her 40s). There have been some complaints that these asides are distracting, however, I welcomed them. They were not only short, interesting stories; they provided insight into raising children in the Victorian era. There were no bottles and certainly no formulas during this time. If a woman couldn't nurse her baby, her healthy alternatives were limited. These anecdotes were informative and also prevented me from running with my original assumption that any woman who would give her baby over to a wet nurse was a monster.

If I were to have any complaints, it might be about the ending, where Susan's luck trumps her cunning. However, this is a super-fast, enjoyable, moving and funny read that I would recommend to anyone (particularly maternal females).