52 pages • 1 hour read
Leïla SlimaniThe Perfect Nanny
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 34-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary: “Stéphanie”
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses child abuse, thoughts of infanticide, and mental health disorders.
Chapter 34 returns the narrative to Stéphanie. It’s revealed that one of Louise’s employers helped get Stéphanie into a good school when she was young, “but Stéphanie did not repay this act of generosity” (177). She made trouble in school, which embarrassed Louise. She was eventually expelled, with the school administration telling Louise that “Stéphanie would be more comfortable in a neighborhood closer to home. In an environment more suited to her, where she would have more points of reference” (180). Stéphanie doesn’t care about getting thrown out of school, but Louise is angry and embarrassed. When they get home, Louise physically beats Stéphanie.
Chapter 35 Summary
Chapter 35 returns to the story of the Massé family, whose relationship with Louise continues to deteriorate: “The silences and misunderstandings have infected everything. In the apartment, the atmosphere grows heavier” (183). Myriam is more distant and less friendly with Louise, trying to reestablish a professional relationship.
Louise goes on a date with Hervé, the man she met at Wafa’s wedding party, and sleeps with him. Her sexual encounter with Hervé inspires her—she realizes that if Paul and Myriam have another baby, they won’t be able to get rid of her as easily. Mila is already in school, and Adam will start school in September, which means Louise isn’t needed. Her livelihood with the Massé family depends on them having another child. However, Myriam is strongly against getting pregnant again. When Louise does the laundry, she keeps an eye out for signs that Myriam has gotten her period: “The blood returns ceaselessly; she knows its odor, this blood that Myriam cannot hide from her and that, each month, announces the death of a child” (187).
Chapter 36 Summary
Louise’s situation gets increasingly desperate as her landlord makes plans to evict her. Louise was recommended by one of his former tenants, “a nurse at the Henri-Mondor hospital who had always paid her rent on time” (194). Louise becomes even more desperate to keep her job with the Massé family. She views them as her only salvation and wants nothing more than to remain in their home.
Chapter 37 Summary
Chapter 37 describes Louise’s interactions with the other nannies in the park. Wafa is her only friend. The other nannies keep their distance: To them, “Louise was like a chaperone, a quartermaster, an English governess. The others disliked her haughty airs, her ludicrous grande dame pose” (197). White and French, Louise is the odd one out. However, the nannies see that the children Louise cares for are getting older and know this means she will need a new job soon—a situation they can empathize with. One nanny, Lydie, tries to help Louise, telling her that a young pregnant woman who is expecting twins came by the park to look for a nanny. Lydie asks Louise if she should give the woman Louise’s number. Louise doesn’t reply but flees, knocking over a stroller in the process. Lydie believes she knocked it over on purpose.
Chapter 38 Summary
Louise is increasingly fixated on the hope that Paul and Myriam might have another child, even though Myriam has made it clear she has no interest in getting pregnant again. Louise, however, can’t let the idea go: “Her obsession with the child spins endlessly in her mind. She thinks of nothing else” (203). Louise tries to orchestrate a romantic evening for Paul and Myriam by taking the children out to a restaurant. When she gets home, Louise discovers Paul on the couch, alone. Paul tells Louise that Myriam went to bed as soon as she got home from work. She and Paul didn’t even get a chance to see each other. Louise’s scheme fails.
Chapter 39 Summary
Louise feels increasingly alone. She stops telling Mila stories and doesn’t laugh as much anymore. She leaves the TV on all day. She is increasingly irritated by the kids and daydreams about hurting them. She starts thinking, “Someone has to die for us to be happy” (214). She seems unable to control such thoughts: “Morbid refrains echo inside Louise’s head when she walks. Phrases that she didn’t invent—and whose meaning she is not sure she fully grasps—fill her mind” (214).
Chapter 40 Summary
Chapter 40 depicts a moment when the Massé family happens to see Louise walking in the city. It’s the only time they see her leading an independent existence that extends beyond her service for them. Myriam is troubled by the chance sighting, which makes her curious about Louise’s life: “For the first time she tries to imagine, in a corporeal sense, everything Louise is when she is not with them” (219).
Chapters 34-40 Analysis
The final cluster of chapters returns the narrative to Stéphanie. The final anecdote about Louise’s daughter sets the stage for the violence to come. It’s the only time—other than Adam’s and Mila’s murder—that the reader witnesses Louise being overtly violent.
Once again, Stéphanie is a prime example of classist power structures at play. Stéphanie is given an opportunity to go to a more prestigious school than the one she has immediate access to—however, she’s unable or unwilling to adapt to this new environment. The school administration eventually expels her for acting out and advises Louise to keep her in schools “more suited to her” (180), a euphemism for lower-class schools. Stéphanie is sent back to the less prestigious school—where, it’s heavily implied, “she belongs.” Louise’s rage has multiple potential sources. Stéphanie’s expulsion is a harsh reminder of their “lower class” status. Louise works and works, but her inherited debts linger, an ever-present source of stress in the background of her life.
These final chapters no longer hint at Louise’s increasing distress—they lay it bare. They emphasize how alone Louise feels. They show her watching TV all day instead of caring for the children. They suggest that she’s hearing voices and having uncontrollable, violent thoughts, like “Sometimes she wants to put her fingers around Adam’s neck and squeeze until he faints” and “Someone has to die for us to be happy” (213, 214).
The chapters emphasize Louise’s solitude. She’s alone, even on the playground surrounded by other nannies. Louise is the perpetual “Other.” She doesn’t fit in with the nannies, she doesn’t fit in with the families she works for, and she doesn’t have a family of her own.
Her desperation is obviously mounting in the final chapters, as she becomes obsessed with the idea of Myriam having another baby—the only way she can secure her place in the Massé household. Louise’s desperation is compounded by the fact that she’s facing eviction. Her character has been frequently objectified and treated as a possession; to those “above” her, she’s disposable. This problem extends beyond Louise. This excerpt surmises the disposable nature of the nanny:
Around the slide and the sandpit, she hears snatches of Baoulé, Dyula, Arabic and Hindi, sweet nothings whispered in Filipino or Russian. Languages from all over the world contaminate the babbling of the children, who learn odd words and repeat them to their enchanted parents. ‘He speaks Arabic, I swear! Listen to him. Then, with the passing years, the children forget. And as the face and the voice of the now-vanished nanny face from memory, nobody in the house recalls how to say ‘Mama’ in Lingala or the name of the exotic dishes that the nice nanny used to make. (198)
It’s an ironic and troubling conundrum. A nanny is entrusted with a family’s most vulnerable members, its innocent children. A nanny becomes part of the household, sometimes even part of the family. However, a nanny is, by definition, temporary—because a nanny’s job is to care for young children, and children grow up, losing their earliest memories as they age. If their parents don’t consider the nanny valuable enough to remember—and in The Perfect Nanny, they often don’t—the children will certainly forget the very person who nurtured them during their most formative years. Louise has been “the perfect nanny” and given so much to the Massé family in terms of time and energy, but as soon as Adam can attend school with Mila, she’ll have no place in their hearts or their home.
Louise’s employers willfully ignore this and any other struggle Louise faces. The few moments when they get glimpses of Louise’s hardships—when they find out she can’t swim or learn about her back taxes—they are annoyed. Louise’s hardships inconvenience them. Even Myriam, who has overall been more sensitive to Louise than others in the book (like Paul or Mr. Franck) has failed to recognize Louise as a full-fledged human woman, who may have her own life and troubles. It only strikes her in the penultimate chapter, Chapter 40, when she sees Louise on the street: “For the first time she tries to imagine, in a corporeal sense, everything Louise is when she is not with them” (219). It would, of course, be absurd for Myriam to have another child solely to keep Louise employed. However, the extent to which the Massés—and many others in the book—dehumanize Louise reflects the severe lack of respect for domestic workers that permeates the higher classes.
