Americans in France - Paperback

Misunderstandings arise when a bumptious but well-meaning American, Captain Smith, tries to bring Yankee innovation to a tradition-bound French family in a decaying ancestral home in Burgundy. France had welcomed the American soldiers and nurses who arrived in 1917 to help the war-ravaged nation beat back the invader. But in peacetime the immediate issue is how Americans have driven up the price of eggs. The Franco-American culture clash intensifies with Henri's announcement that he wants to marry an American nurse he met when they together tended the wounded near the front. Nurse Nellie shows up, quite oblivious of the expected formalities. Henri's older sister Henriette has her own ideas about what her brother's future should be, and this eventually culminates in a cat-fight between the two women. Brieux took pains to allow sympathy for each woman, even as each epitomizes her own culture: the liberated New Woman vs. the presumed spinster. The comedy of misunderstandings plays out in hilarious scenes like that of a paper-shuffling notary and in Captain Smith's lovably exuberant social clumsiness. While Brieux here favors warm laughter over his usual social justice issues, contemporary resonances lurk in his environmental and economic subtext. French and Americans alike are changed by their close encounters.