Villette

Considered Charlotte Brontë's most autobiographical novel, Villette follows the story of Lucy Snow, perhaps one of the most self-contained heroines in all of nineteenth-century literature. Penniless and alone in the world, Lucy pursues her fortune abroad, teaching at a girls' school in the French city of Villette. Her experiences there, her encounters with both her fellow countrymen and the French natives of the city in which she has settled, and the relations she forms with her colleagues and students, are all chronicled in this gradually unfolding character study.

Readers expecting something more along the lines of Jane Eyre, with its strong narrative flow, will be somewhat disappointed, I believe. Villette is a far more cerebral show more text, less plot-driven than is it character-centric. This has both advantages and disadvantages, in that it allows Brontë to plumb the psychological depths of her heroine in a way not seen in her earlier work, but also causes the story to drag somewhat, especially in the middle sections.

Highly principled, somewhat prejudiced, and terribly lonely, Lucy Snow has always struck me as a flawed, more human version of Jane Eyre. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that she is what Jane would be, in the absence of hope. Her unrequited (possibly?) love for M. Paul, who is himself a deeply flawed individual, has something of the strength of despair in it at times, and the novel in general has a darker tone.

As an aside, I should mention that Villette has numerous, and sometimes extensive, passages in French. The reader who is unacquainted with that language would do well to obtain a version in which translations are given in the rear notes. show less

"A sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed on me.",, 21 July 2015

This review is from: Villette (Penguin English Library) (Paperback)
Other reviews have delineated the storyline; I'm just going to say that I was within five pages of the end (on tenterhooks as to whether our narrator, Lucy Snowe, ends up with a happy or unutterably wretched life) when I had to stop and go to work. I was yearning to come home and find out all the time I was there - must be the proof of a compelling work.
Charlotte Bronte's descriptions of utter loneliness and inner, but hidden, torment make for a moving and unforgettable read. While her friends remark on "steady little Lucy...so quietly pleased, so little moved yet so content", she observes show more "little knew they the rack of pain which had driven Lucy almost into fever, and brought her out, guideless and reckless, urged and drugged to the brink of frenzy".
Superb read. show less

I understood Lucy and her plight, from her loneliness and aloneness to her irrational impulse to get up and flee from what she wants. If not out loud, I was mentally coaxing her to "Just DO such-and-such! Go for it! Who cares what those other folks think? Who are they, anyway?"--all the while understanding why she wouldn't do as I coaxed and realizing the probability that, if I was in her position, I might not do as I coaxed either. (Ha! Show us ourselves, Brontë, and we'll accordingly see where and how we can become something better.)

I don't know if it was the author's intention to make anything "cute" about her characters, but her style of writing often breeds cuteness in the characters and their relations with one another. Lucy and show more M. Paul grow into such a cute pair, likely, I think, already stuck on each other long before they recognize it, or at least long before Lucy does.

Toward the end of the novel, I began reading in a passionate rush, the climax goading me forward faster than I moved through the majority of the story, even drawing an audible groan or something akin to a vindictive growl from me at one point (though I had to check it, since I was reading in a public place at the time.) Earlier details which could easily have been arbitrary turned out not to be, as a purpose was ultimately brought out of these details. Throughout the book, I was pleased by Brontë's ability to surprise me, to handle the character development, the plot, and the execution in ways I would not have foreseen. Sometimes I thought her choices strange; but then, who wants to read a book for which you can accurately predetermine every turn the plot will take and exactly how the characters will be in every respect? That wouldn't leave much of a need for the author's work or imagination--you could have just written the book yourself and saved the trouble of procuring it from elsewhere. Hence, the "strange" choices served to strengthen the book as a whole, and while I would have assumed there'd be a need for me to rate this book below Jane Eyre, now a favorite novel of mine that would be hard to match, saying this book didn't amaze me wouldn't be an accurate statement. I appreciate it differently than Brontë's most popular novel, but not unequally. A wonderful read! show less

Lucy is one of the most coy narrators I've encountered, almost annoyingly so. She seems almost to enjoy subterfuge: "There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction." She indulges this mood more than a little, not just with other characters but with the reader as well. She doesn't want to talk at all about what drives her out of England on an aimless path to Brussels - pardon, Villette - only referring vaguely to an unhappy home life she could no longer tolerate. There's some strange withholding of information that would normally irritate me, but here I find forgivable because it's such of a piece with the portrayal of Lucy's character. So far as narrators go, she's untrustworthy but not show more always through meaning to be; she is, rather, deeply engaged in hiding things from herself.

I find it strange to say, then, that Lucy emerges as a character with incredible depth. Charlotte Bronte was brilliant at writing grounded women who have their emotional struggles but reason through and past them. Lucy's struggle is with her avoidance of feeling or desiring anything too intensely. Strong emotion overwhelms her and she keeps all of it at bay, the good together with the bad. When she does release it, it tends to come forward in emphatic bursts. Otherwise she maintains her inner and outer peace, often at great cost to herself and confusion for those around her. She presents differently to each person (a very real phenomena) such that all of the secondary characters almost know her as being different people. She is satisfied to play these various roles for these various audiences, an actor in life even while proving she has no interest in the stage.

The romantic pairing comes as a total surprise, and is a reverse of what Bronte did with Jane: there, the obvious match proved less than ideal (at first). Here, a seemingly far from ideal match proves otherwise. As a reader I was both pleased and amused by it. Were Lucy my daughter, however much he redeems himself I might still have cautioned her against the match. A man of sudden temper who indulges in extreme verbal abuses without warning? And his first physical touch is to pull her ear? The conclusion is as equally surprising, and brave. show less

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS REVIEW

TL;DR: There are a few things I liked about this book, but overall, to me, this is an instance where changing times and mores have rendered earlier centuries’ attitudes too distasteful to be ignored.

I liked the main character. Miss Snowe is clever, resourceful, and knows what she wants (even if her ambitions are low). Her snarkiness plays a big role in her charm. She’s a wonderfully complex character. There were enough interesting musings and general bird’s-eye views on life mixed in with the text, too. It drags in places, but overall the narrative maintains a pleasant momentum.

However.

The attitudes espoused in the book and held up by the characters as “how things ought to be” I found too show more distasteful to overlook: there’s aggressive patriarchal abuse, there’s sanctimonious posturing with religious credentials, and there’s colonial-style racism aplenty. They may make the text a rich field to explore intellectually, but they annoyed much of the reading pleasure out of me.

First, there’s the gender issues. Viewed as a romance novel, Villette presents the main character, introverted expat teacher Lucy Snowe, with the choice between two love interests. One is an ideal (English)man, whose ideal spouse is one who is his intellectual partner. And on the other hand there is M. Emanuel, a domineering, exacting brute with frightening anger management issues and temper tantrums, who will not tolerate contradiction or even imagined disobedience. His ideal woman is one who obeys him absolutely (an arch eyebrow will trigger a “know your place, woman” speech), who immerses herself in him, lives up to his exacting yet unspoken standards, and who successfully navigates his moving-the-goalposts scrutiny. Spoiler: This is the one Miss Snowe ends up choosing.

Brontë “redeems” M. Emanuel in true battered-woman form: his exactitude, tyranny and temper tantrums merely stem from genuine, full-on passion and honesty, dontcha see? That’s just who he is. Also, he’s been hurt before: doesn’t that earn him indulgence and compassion? That time he scolded her for wearing clothes that weren’t mouse-grey and wildly (and knowingly) exaggerated their showiness because even a mild “transgression” is a transgression? That’s not domineering, it just shows you he cares. His constantly lording his academic superiority over her, well he only means the best for her, and his expectations are high! Don’t you see that he needs to test her, to be sure she’ll live up to his standards? It’s for her own good. Really, he means well. That time he showed her some much-needed affection and then went completely incommunicado for two weeks, well, that was necessary because he was preparing a surprise, and he would not be able to keep it from her if she subjected him to her sincere and irresistible feminine questions. So you see, it really was her own fault. Also, her emotional despair during the interval is irrelevant, this really was about his emotions.

Lucy Snowe (and the reader) is not to notice the systematic pattern of denigration and abuse. We are invited to see him as a poor, suffering victim who needs fixing by a special woman who can see the real person underneath the abuse and tyranny.

This is where the religious hypocrisy comes in: M. Emanuel is, after all, a very pious man -- surely that will vouch for his decency?

Much is made of Emanuel’s strongly held Roman Catholicism: to illustrate that, it is revealed that he has been spending his last twenty years in self-imposed mortification, near-poverty and deprivation, in order to benefit people who kinda sorta wronged him. Brontë presents that as laudable and redeem-worthy because isn’t he just sooo pious? I thought it was merely perverse, a case of ostentatious and downright pathological Catholic guilt taken to extremes. Especially because the revelation about his mortification is presented to the reader as an invitation to reconsider the quality of his character: it takes principles and lofty morality and strength of resolve to commit to this course of action. Well, no. To me, this turns the whole affair into a case of ostentatious flagellation, calculated to trigger goodwill: showy Catholic suffering used as emotional manipulation while pretending to high morality. Somebody is suffering beyond necessity; therefore the issue is deep and admirable and worthwhile. No, it really, really isn’t. (It is true that it is Brontë who sets it up like this, but in-universe it is M. Emanuel who expects the revelation to change Miss Snowe’s opinion of him, too.)

And finally, there is the racism. The main cast consists mostly of smug, impossibly arrogant English expats looking down on both the locals and the immigrants -- except other Englishmen, and the occasional Frenchman, who, after all, represents a prestigious and long-standing High Culture. They are so smug they do not realize they are immigrants too -- and do not realize their smugness. The native people of Labassecour/Belgium are generally described as too rural, ugly and stupid to merit any interest, except for a few of the ones who’ve mastered enough French to not sound like a local. Anyone who’s worth noticing is either a French or an English expat/immigrant; even the indigenous royalty, nobility and bourgeoisie is dismissed haughtily, not to be taken seriously as company or one’s intellectual equals.
(Disclaimer: I myself am Belgian.)

It’s not as though these issues are mainly located in the background as (well, the racism is, usually): the patriarchal abuse is held up front and center, and the main focus of the book, and this made it too hard for me to give the book the benefit of the doubt. The fact that pretentious religious posturing is presented as a redeeming factor did not help. show less

A very enjoyable read - though it is a bit of a 'typical' Charlotte Brontë it also held some surprises.

Lucy, a young woman with no family who can take care of her, travels abroad and finds a position as English teacher at a girls' school. Though her situation is difficult at first, she encounters some old friends and begins to find her place in Villette, with old friends and new friends helping her through her troubles.

The novel is in some ways typical, a story of a female teacher and her hardships, with some obligatory gothic elements and female hysteria, but at the same time Brontë gives the novel an original twist.
The book focuses very much on the interpersonal relations in the school, where the headmistress spies on her pupils and show more employees, and where there are intrigues going on that influence Lucy's position and future. Brontë weaves an intricate web of relationships, in which new acquaintances of Lucy turn out to be intimately connected to old acquaintances.
In the midst of the intrigues and manipulations at the school, Lucy has to find her way to stay true to herself, whilst simultaneously maintaining her position in the school.
Apart from this, Brontë plays with the narration, turning Lucy at times into an unreliable narrator, giving an extra dimension to the novel.

Definitely more rich than I had expected, and a novel I'd like to re-read in the future. show less

How had I never read Villette before? This is Charlotte Brontë's third and final novel (although the first novel she wrote, The Professor, was published posthumously). Like Jane Eyre it is told through the eyes of a single female protagonist who has a lot of Brontë's characteristics -- Lucy Snow is a small, quiet, plain British woman who has suffered an undescribed family tragedy, is alone, and has to take care of herself. She takes big chances and has big emotions, but generally comes off as very meek and reserved to those around her. After the old woman who she had been serving as a nurse / companion dies, Lucy impulsively decides to sail to Villette (a fictional version of Brussels), despite knowing no one there and not speaking show more French, where through a series of accidents she ends up at a girl's school serving first as a nurse to the children of the director, Madame Beck, and later as the English teacher. The novel takes us through the next 18 months of Lucy's life in Villette where she reconnects with her godmother and Dr. John Breton, her godmother's son, who she used to stay with frequently as a child. The group is reunited with the delicate and rather intense and slightly annoying Polly Home (who is now a countess) who stayed with them when she was a young and very odd child. Lucy secretly falls in love with Dr. John and thinks he may have feelings for her as well until Polly confides in her that the two of them are in love, which cracks her heart but meets with her approval. She then leans into her frenemy, the mercurial M. Emanuel, a professor at the local college who is a kinsman of Madame Beck and who teaches literature at the girl's school. Their friendship becomes more and more intense until both Madame Beck (who has her eye on M. Emanuel) and M. Emanuel's confessor, the kindly (?) priest Peter Silas both get concerned about his developing interest in a PROTESTANT! I won't give away much more since everyone should read this amazing book except to say that Brontë nails the ending -- much more satisfying than the ending of Jane Eyre, which I love even though it does not stick the landing. Charlotte and her sister Emily studied in Brussels in their 20s and Charlotte later came back to serve as a teacher at their same school where she developed a one-sided romance with M. Hegar, the husband of the director. Lucy's other love interest was closely modeled on another close friend / love interest of Charlotte's, George Smith, her publisher. Charlotte had an intense epistolary relationship with both men and those explosive emotions really color the world of the novel. This review is getting rather long, but I also have to mention that Lucy is haunted by a potentially real ghost nun throughout the book and at one point is given an opiate drink that gets her all jazzed up so she goes to wander the city alone late at night having adventures. This is a weird and wonderful book -- much more mature than Jane Eyre, but with the same fire. Highly recommended. show less