Belle Epoque

The young adult novel Belle Epoque (2013) by Elizabeth Ross is a historical fiction set in Paris during the end of the 19th century, in the glittering period known as the La Belle Époque, or “the beautiful era,” when art, design, culture, and economic prosperity were on the upswing. Ross’s heroine is a poor young woman on the make at the time when few jobs were available to women. To avoid starving, she becomes the paid companion of a debuting socialite, though her life is soon complicated by her choices, her romantic entanglement with a musician, and the socialite’s unforeseen interest in anything other than an arranged marriage.

In 1888, 17-year-old Maude Pichon escapes her provincial village in Brittany to come to the place she has always dreamed of: Paris. Fueling her decision is the fact that her grocery father has decided to marry her off to the fat, old village butcher—a man who repulses Maude. But when she arrives in the beautiful French capital, her dreams of living a beautiful life immediately disappear. Because she has no references, she can’t get a job as a shop attendant, one of the few ways for a woman with few skills to make a living without prostituting herself. Desperate, starving, and freezing in a garret hovel, Maude chances on an advertisement in a torn newspaper: “Ugly young women wanted for undemanding work.”

When she answers the ad, Maude learns about a strange enterprise run by the Durandeau Agency—they hire out unattractive women who serve as repoussoirs, or “repulsive” foils, for the wealthy. The idea is simple: Put a hideous or simply plain face next to yourself in public and become instantly more attractive by comparison. The paid companion functions not just as forgettable background but is also meant to specifically enhance her employer—an accessory that calls attention to the employer’s assets and disguises her flaws. (Ironically, in creating this fictional occupation, Ross uses an art term with the opposite meaning: in painting, a repoussoir is a foreground object that gives the illusion of depth to the rest of the painting—for example, an up-close tree that points to a distant mountain, or a painted curtain revealing a scene behind it.)



The thin, plain-faced Maude is hired on the spot, and almost immediately gets a placement: As soon as her training is complete, she will be the paid repoussoir to Isabelle, the daughter of the Countess Dubern. Maude’s weeks of training are humiliating, cruel, and miserable. She meets the other women working at the agency, all of whom go through a daily exercise of pointing out each other’s worst features: unsymmetrical faces, piggy noses, bony or overweight bodies. The lower the women’s self-esteem, the better they will be at self-effacingly talking up their future patrons. At the same time, the women learn how to blend into elite society so that they can pass as members of the upper class.

Countess Dubern insists that Maude not reveal to Isabelle that she is a paid companion. Instead, Maude must pretend to be the niece of a close friend of the family whom the Duberns have kindly agreed to help debut. The Countess wants to find Isabelle a suitable match over the summer.

Maude tries to befriend Isabelle, but at first finds her spoiled, bratty, and unpleasant. Soon, however, the reason for Isabelle’s intransigence emerges—she has no interest in being married off and becoming a society wife. Instead, Isabelle would like to pursue the science of photography, at that time still a messy and complex endeavor of laboratory chemicals and flash powder preparations. Isabelle has a brilliant mind; she would rather focus on developing it at school than simply getting by on her good looks. The more Maude gets to know Isabelle, the more she likes her, and the worse she feels about lying to her about her real status in the household.



At the same time, Maude meets Paul Villette, a dissipated drunkard who is also a talented if underappreciated musician who is somewhat anachronistically trying to make Jazz happen in Paris (somewhat before the genre’s actual development in New Orleans). Paul is a poor, often disheveled mess, but Maude falls instantly in love with him. Readers complain that the relationship seems somewhat forced and that the few interactions these characters have don’t seem to justify the depth of their feelings. Instead, Paul is often suspicious of Maude, not believing her when she explains her job to him and accusing her of being a prostitute.

Despite the need to be a repoussoir, the life of a debutante agrees with the somewhat sheltered and naïve Maude at first. She is caught up in the glamour and riches until she almost has the sense that the aristocrats around her could accept her as one of them even if they knew the truth about her background. Of course, this delusion is quickly shattered as soon as Isabelle finds out exactly who and what Maude is.

Undoing her poor decisions, Maude must quickly repair her relationships with the other women in the agency, whom she had started to treat with condescension. Luckily, the agency’s other women have also had enough of their terrible lives. They band together and fight back against Monsieur Durandeau, the agency’s owner. Armed with Isabelle’s trusty camera, Maude has a cathartic portrait session with each of the women, photographing them in ways that display their inner beauty. This scene aligns with the novel’s recurring references to the Eiffel Tower, a metaphor for unconventional beauty.



The ending is an entirely happy one, as every character gets what she wants. Isabelle marries a charming and kind Duke who supports her passion for photography and science. After Isabelle gives Maude a camera for Christmas, Maude also becomes a photographer and ends up with her beloved Paul. All the agency’s other women discover work in their preferred artistic and creative fields, spurring the cultural production that will define this period in history.