Dependence and Possessiveness

Dependence and Possessiveness names the double movement in Louise’s relationship with the Massé family: her work becomes indispensable to their household, while her longing for a place within it turns care into a claim of belonging. The family depends on her practical and emotional labor, but Louise’s attachment does not remain safely within the limits of employment. What sustains the family’s ease also gives her intimacy with its members; what feels to her like love can become possessive, and what the employers experience as help can conceal a widening imbalance of power and responsibility.

Dependence Built Through Domestic Work

At the outset, the arrangement is explicitly an employment relationship. Paul has prepared questions and timed interviews; he wants a nanny who is energetic and available, and describes the job as work that will allow the parents to work. Myriam recognizes the discrimination behind the hiring conversation. Emma has advised her to consider whether a candidate has children, because a nanny with children may be unable to stay late or babysit. Myriam is disturbed by the idea of excluding a woman for being a mother, yet she does not raise the issue with Paul. Their search for care is thus shaped from the beginning by the employers’ demands for availability and by the unequal terms on which a worker’s family life is assessed.

Louise’s appointment seems to transform the apartment almost immediately. On her first day, Myriam gives instructions about the appliances, particular possessions, and Paul’s vinyl collection. Louise listens silently, appearing compliant, while also surveying each room with the composure of someone taking possession of a territory. In the weeks that follow, she mends buttons, hems clothes, repairs Mila’s garments, washes curtains, and changes the sheets weekly. She makes order out of the family’s clutter and turns their cramped home into what Myriam experiences as a calm, bright space. Paul compares her to Mary Poppins; the couple are delighted that she has become indispensable, even though her wages weigh on their budget.

That indispensability is built out of tasks that exceed the visible work of watching children. Louise prepares dinner, keeps the children calm and dressed, teaches Mila to hang up her coat, and prevents dishes, laundry, unopened envelopes, or food from accumulating. In a flower-covered notebook she records school and dance schedules, medical appointments, medicines, the price of an ice cream, and the exact words of Mila’s teacher. Her attentiveness makes the household run smoothly, but it also renders the labor behind that smoothness easy to overlook. Myriam and Paul can return to a home that seems naturally orderly because Louise has taken on the work of producing that appearance.

Intimacy Without Clear Boundaries

The job’s boundaries expand as Louise becomes more than a worker summoned for a defined shift. She arrives earlier and leaves later; when Myriam tells her she can go home, Louise continues cleaning the bathtub, folding towels, preparing the children’s beds, and putting dinner on the stove. She gently insists that Myriam rest and spend time with her children. Myriam increasingly accepts this care, gives more tasks to a grateful Louise, and no longer calls to explain that she will be late. Louise’s labor holds up the family’s fragile domestic arrangements, while the parents grow accustomed to relying on her without having clearly negotiated the additional work.

The household’s hospitality and its dependence blur further when Louise begins sleeping on the sofa. After an evening out, Paul and Myriam find her asleep there and cover her with a blanket. The arrangement is never explicitly discussed, but it recurs once or twice a week. Paul worries that Louise may one day accuse them of exploiting her, and Myriam promises to reset the boundaries. Yet she is also secretly pleased by the extra domestic work Louise performs without being asked. Her apologies for imposing are met with Louise’s assurance that she is there for exactly that purpose. Gifts, secondhand clothes, and an orange cake become Myriam’s way of showing consideration, while her effort to hide new purchases from Louise suggests that the relationship now involves a careful management of feeling as well as a wage.

In the children’s games, the closeness takes a more troubling form. Louise invents elaborate games of police and thief, complete with costumes, settings, and rules. Her favorite game of hide-and-seek has no counting and no rules: she disappears without warning, hides where she can watch the children, and remains silent even when they call for her. Mila and Adam first laugh and search, but the game turns into fear. Adam sobs, and Mila comes to believe that Louise has truly abandoned them. The episode makes the children’s dependence palpable, while also showing Louise controlling the terms of their emotional experience: she watches their panic without responding to it.

Attachment, Exclusion, and Possessiveness

The family’s dependence is not only practical. At a dinner party, Myriam introduces Louise to Pascal as their nanny and tells the guests that everyone envies her. Louise is briefly praised for her cooking, then becomes the subject of conversation as Paul speaks of “our nanny” in her presence, in the way people might speak of children or elderly relatives. While the guests drink and talk, Louise slips back into the kitchen to clean. Her work brings her into the intimate center of the household, but the party also exposes how readily that intimacy can coexist with a diminished social position: she is present, admired, and yet treated as someone to be talked about rather than included as an equal.

Louise’s longing sharpens when she sees Paul and Myriam dancing together during the family’s holiday. She understands the moment as temporary, watches them with the wish to keep them there, and imagines herself remaining in the shadows to make everything perfect. Her sense of attachment culminates in the conviction that their happiness belongs to her, that they belong to her and she to them. The language turns mutual dependence into mutual possession. Yet the relationship is not symmetrical: Louise’s work and emotional investment bind her to the family, while the family retain the authority to decide when she is needed, invited, or left behind.

That asymmetry is clearest when Myriam tells Louise the family will spend a week in the mountains with Paul’s parents. Louise leaves without saying goodbye to the children. Later, when Sylvie arrives to take them, she greets them noisily and promises a week of games and treats; Myriam notices Louise standing pale and exhausted in the kitchen. Myriam tells herself she owes her nanny nothing, yet feels as if she is taking the children away from Louise or punishing her. Louise’s intense hostility toward Sylvie has already made Myriam uncomfortable: she takes her employer’s side with excessive force and urges her to keep the grandmother away from the children. The family’s reliance has generated a closeness that Myriam experiences as reassuring, but also as a pressure on her freedom to share her children with others.

Care Turning Toward Control

The boundary between protection and possession becomes physical when Mila gets lost at the amusement park. After Mila returns to Louise, the nanny embraces and kisses her, apologizing for her own negligence. Once the stranger who had confronted them walks away, Louise tightens her hold until Mila says she cannot breathe and struggles to get free. Louise warns that a bad man could take the child, hide her, keep her, and prevent her from seeing her parents again. The threat is framed as protection, but the force of the embrace and the frightening story overwhelm the child’s attempt to pull away. Mila bites Louise’s shoulder until it bleeds; that evening, neither tells Myriam what happened. Their silence creates a secret grievance on each side and, paradoxically, a new form of unity between them.

The episode makes the care relationship’s ethical limit visible. Louise has noticed the danger of Mila wandering off and wants to prevent a recurrence, but she does not respond to Mila’s fear by loosening her grip or letting her speak for herself. Her warnings transform the child’s vulnerability into an instrument of control. The attachment is real, but it does not make the relationship equal: Louise is the adult and caregiver, while Mila is a child who has just been frightened and cannot simply refuse the person on whom she depends.

The Cost of Being Indispensable

The same dependence that gives Louise a place in the Massé home can leave her isolated from it. On a Saturday when the family may be eating out, she waits in her Créteil studio, dressed and ready in case they call. She imagines sitting between Mila and Adam in a crowded brasserie, feeding Adam spoonful by spoonful and listening to Paul and Myriam talk. The scene exists as a hope rather than a shared family outing; the lunch hour passes, rain begins, and no one calls. The distance between Louise’s imagined belonging and her actual place is measured not by a dramatic dismissal but by an ordinary afternoon when the family can make plans without her.

When Louise is too ill to get out of bed and fails to arrive, Myriam first fears that she has disappeared for good and accuses Paul of having treated her as a mere employee. Paul points out that something may have happened to her and suggests looking up her address. Louise eventually calls to apologize and explains that she has been sick. Myriam is ashamed to realize that she had imagined Louise as incapable of illness or fatigue. The moment exposes the contradiction at the heart of the arrangement: Louise is treated as indispensable to the family’s daily functioning, yet her own body and needs have been pushed out of view until her absence interrupts the household.

The novel’s account of dependence and possessiveness therefore links affection to labor rather than treating affection as a remedy for unequal employment. Louise’s care makes the Massés’ home calmer and their lives easier, while the family’s recognition of her as extraordinary does not itself establish fair limits. Her wish to belong grows inside a relationship that depends on her availability, and that wish sometimes turns into a demand the children cannot safely bear. The bond’s tenderness and its danger arise from the same arrangement: intimacy is continually produced through care, but the power to define its boundaries does not belong equally to everyone involved.