The first thing that you notice when reading The House in Paris, is that the beginning of this novel opens in the present time which implies that the novel is divided into different periods of time. You also notice that the novel is told by a third person narrator who describes a young girl, Henrietta, travelling to an elderly Mme Fisher’s house to stay for a while. We are immediately introduced to multiple characters as we learn that Henrietta is on a trip to visit her grandmother because her mother has passed away.
Leopold is another character visiting Mme Fisher’s house and is supposed to be meeting his mother there for the first time, leaving us as readers to wonder what has happened in his past that he is just now meeting his birth mother. We learn more about Leopold’s character when we find out about him snooping through Miss Fisher’s handbag and taking the three envelopes that he finds. This part of the novel tells us that Leopold is, to a certain degree, distrusting of Miss Fisher and eager to find out more information about his mother and her arrival because he completely disregards the letter to Henrietta at first and goes directly for the letter from his mother. The fact that the letter from Leopold’s mother is missing from the envelope not only adds to the mystery of what has happened in Leopold’s past with his relationship with his mother, but also adds to notion of distrust that Leopold seems to have towards Miss Fisher as he feels she has “done him down”. We learn from the second letter that Leopold doesn’t understand the concept of how he was born as he has not yet been taught sexual education so this is a delicate topic for him. Lastly, we see that Leopold is a curious child as he opens the letter that is meant for Henrietta and we learn that Henrietta is meant to spend only the day in Paris before going to be with her grandmother in South France. While reading Part one, I realized that a lot of information is given to the reader through Leopold’s actions of snooping and reading letters, which leads me to believe that Leopold is a prime character in this novel who may reveal more to us later on in the novel.
At the end of part one, we learn that Leopold’s mother will not be coming as Miss Fisher reads a telegram that was sent, presumably by Leopold’s mother, and says, “Your mother is not coming, she cannot come”. While it is not explained why Leopold’s mother cannot come, there is a sense of betrayal as he was so hopeful and expectant of seeing his mother, just to be let down when the time came.
It is clear that a main theme of this novel is motherhood, as we can see with the passing of Henrietta’s mother which leads her to her journey through France, as well as, the welcoming of Leopold’s birth mother into his life after being raised by his adoptive mother. While this theme relates to the last novel we read,
, in its importance placed on motherhood, The House in Paris does not seem to place importance upon gender equality and gender “norms”, like was a prominent theme in Herland.
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