La Maternelle

La Maternelle (1904; "The Kindergarten") is a Prix Goncourt winning novel by French author Léon Frapié.

The story is about Rose, an educated girl from a well off family who faces a series of tragic events that leaves her penniless and without a home.

[1] Rose has the lowest tasks in the school: she dusts, sweeps the rooms, lights the fire early in the morning, and she takes care of the children physically, all day round.

[1] The children include "mouse," the gentle five-year-old little mother with her brother, her "chickling;" Richard, who cannot imagine that there might exist anything like disinterested kindness and he conceives of every relation between two human beings as a bargain; Adam, the strong and noisy leader of the older boys and a great boaster, the girls who admire him because they are afraid of him.

While Zola saw education as the remedy for almost all ailments and social ills, including poverty and cruelty, Frapié is without pity for the negative traits it taught: resignation, obedience, servility.