Villette

By Charlotte Brontë

Who Deserves Love?

“Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”- Charlotte Bronte, Villette

Villette by Charlotte Bronte is intense story novel about emotions and the struggles of life. Based on the Bronte's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, the story, full of repressed feelings subjection to cruel circumstance and position is about a woman’s right to be loved and to love.
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xist Publishing
• Release date: Mar 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781681956572

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) was the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood. Raised in a strict Anglican home by her clergyman father after the deaths of her mother and two elder siblings, she published all of her poetry and fiction under the pen name Currer Bell. Jane Eyre, her most famous work, is widely considered one of the finest and most influential novels of the nineteenth century. 

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Reviews for Villette

[tess_schoolmarm · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read where Villette was the ruination of Charlotte Bronte's career, and I can understand why. The story is disjointed and difficult to follow. It may be difficult to follow if one doesn't know a great deal of conversational French, as entire paragraphs are written in French. Just terrible!

[dste_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

 I liked this book in the beginning: the set up, getting familiar with the characters, etc. Then all the characters except the narrator abruptly dissapeared.That would be fine except for the fact that the author had really given me no reason at all to care about the narrator up to this point. In fact, I thought that another character named Polly was the one that we were supposed to focus on (I also liked her best). For me, a huge part of any book is the characters, especially the main character. If I don’t like the main character, the book is basically sunk. In this case, I didn’t care about the main character, perhaps because there was so little revealed about her.It got a little better once I adjusted, but it didn’t really pick up for me until the last 50 or so pages, at which point I found it difficult to put the book down. So that’s good, but I’m not sure that those 50 pages can entirely make up for the fact that the plot was SO SLOW to develop. I wasn't even sure what the real plot was supposed to be until I was more than halfway through the book.It probably also didn’t help that I didn’t particularly care for a certain character that I’m sure I was supposed to like by the end. Nor did it help that I can’t speak a word of French (little bits of it pop up frequently, usually in dialogue). And it especially didn’t help that my dislike of the main character was exacerbated when she started acting ethnocentric, putting forth a somewhat stereotypical view of the French and taking quite a few jabs at Catholicism throughout.

[libbromus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"These struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good. They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps, too often opposes: they certainly make a difference in the general tenor of a life, and enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on the surface; and it is on the surface only the common gaze will fall. As to what lies below, leave that with God. Man, your equal, weak as you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out thence: take it to your Maker--show him the secrets of the spirit He gave--ask him how you are to bear the pains He has appointed--kneel in His presence, and pray with faith for light in darkness, for strength in piteous weakness, for patience in extreme need. Certainly at some hour, though perhaps not your hour, the waiting water will stir; in some shape, though perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for which it bled, the healing herald will descend. The cripple and the blind, and the dumb, and the possessed, will be led to bathe. Herald, come quickly! Thousands lie round the pool, weeping and despairing, to see it, through slow years, stagnant. Long are 'times' of Heaven: the orbits of angel messengers seem wide to mortal vision; they may en-ring ages: the cycle of one departure and return may clasp unnumbered generations; and dust, kindling to brief suffering life, and, through pain, passing back to dust, may meanwhile perish out of memory again, and yet again. To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first and sole angel visitant, him easterns call Azrael."Language and philosophy like this is what is to be found in this magnificent novel.I found myself cussing a lot when reading this book. It got more severe as the story snowballed to it's end. Not in a bad way, you know, but it had me hook, line, and sinker, and my feelings were toyed with and yo-yo-ed about. I didn't want this book to end. You should read it, savor it slowly, translate the French as you go, it's worth it.Lucy Snowe is maddening. She is her own worst enemy. If there were ever a case for manifesting one's destiny - well, I mean, was she cursed, or did she curse herself? "the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know." I think there's an argument for both. It occurred to me that for all her haranguing of Ginevra, really they weren't so different. They both craved attention and security and approbation, but in dissimilar ways. At least Ginevra was open about it, while Lucy was utterly incapable of making her needs known. It reminded me that it takes one to know one. Lucy, at one point (though briefly), begins to think of Ginevra as a heroine, and I think I understand why. She would never have traded places with her but I think she must have secretly admired her gumption. Lucy doesn't hate people. She has an utterly astounding font of patience and keen observation and forbearance for people behaving badly, people behaving thoughtlessly, people's innate self-centeredness, she forgives it all. She's no picnic either. She'd like to be that disinterested, unfeeling, untouchable, cold observer of people. But lordy, she's so far from effecting that and she only half knows it.

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"I seemed to hold two lives--the life of thought, and that of
reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter."

Lucy Snowe, the book's heroine, has good common sense, steely nerves, and no protectors. Not for her the life of a hothouse bloom--she must fend for herself from an early age. After the old woman she works for dies, she is left homeless and without friends or family to appeal to. On the spur of the moment, she uses her small store of money to go to France, and thence, to the little town of Villete. There, she lucks into a position at a ladies' school, headed by the strong-minded, light-moraled Madame Beck.

Bronte made a few choices I didn't like. The book is almost comically prejudiced against "popery" and foreigners in general. The paragraphs upon paragraphs of how beautiful, dainty, feminine, delicate-minded, etc. Polly is seem to last forever. And I'm still not sure why Bronte had a nun haunt the school (I assumed it was to A) remind us of Lucy's repression and B)fufill the need for sensationalism), only to explain away the spectre in a sneering aside.

My problems aside, I enjoyed this book, mostly because I loved Lucy so much. She has a low opinion of herself but very high standards, is often depressed but refuses to be ruled by her darker moments, is thoughtful and introverted. She is, overall, someone I'd very much like to meet. Although she has a keen eye and recognizes her friends' faults, she never turns her incisive wit against them. After her love becomes disillusioned with his own paramour, the frivolous, selfish Ginevra, he denounces her to Lucy. Lucy points out that as mercenary as Ginevra is (as she warned him at the start), she has many good qualities; Lucy doesn't sound like a goody-two-shoes, but rather a girl defending her friend. Bronte writes friendships very well and very realistically, and these relationships, along with Lucy's engaging personality, are the backbone of the novel.

[nittnut · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Similar in some ways to [Jane Eyre:], a young girl finds herself alone in the world and in need of an occupation. She takes all she has and travels to France and there finds work in a school. She is the narrator and the only one who can interpret the actions and feelings of the other characters in the book. She is perhaps a bit too introspective for my taste. There are two men who feature in her life, an old friend and son of her godmother, and the professor associated with the school where she teaches. After many ups and downs and long searching for love, or even a place to call home, she finally finds happiness (maybe, because it is left a little to the imagination) with the professor. I had a hard time really getting into this story. I liked [Jane Eyre:] much better.

[tess_w · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read where Villette was the ruination of Charlotte Bronte's career, and I can understand why. The story is disjointed and difficult to follow. It may be difficult to follow if one doesn't know a great deal of conversational French, as entire paragraphs are written in French. Just terrible!

[kristykay22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[cecrow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[thebooksofwrath · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It pains me to say it, but I think that I may identify with Lucy Snowe more than any other character in literature, and thus, in many ways, Brontë herself. It doesn't surprise me that she shares my own Myers-Briggs type (INFJ), as Lucy is a forbearing, passionate character who suffers as a result of her own humility, and she deceives everyone around her in thinking her the strong, silent type who is completely content with who she is, when in actuality life for her is a miserable, never-ending torture. But she pushes through it anyway, never complaining, even when there's no hope and all her dreams are shattered before her. She won't go down in history, and few might remember her, but her effect she has on others' lives is beyond her comprehension.

[nx74defiant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found it a rather slow read. Parts were in untranslated French, which I couldn't understand. Other than going off to Vilette Lucy was very passive. She just watched what was going on around her. Because she held so much back it was hard to care about her. Her romance with M. Paul seemed jarring. Suddenly once he is leaving she loves him. Up till than it didn't seem like she even really liked him and he wasn't very likeable.

[jlford3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I can't express how wonderful this book is. Villette shows great insight into human nature, and the narrator's perspective of other characters was fascinating.

[britt84 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[janerawoof · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting to read the author's semi-autobiographical novel. The main character, Lucy Snowe, was such a contrast with Jane Eyre, her more famous literary "sister"; the latter was more straightforward and open. Lucy was closed-in, emotionally stunted, and self-critical, introverted. In the days where women were appendages of their fathers and husbands, Lucy made her own way herself and a life for herself as a schoolteacher in the town of Villette [i.e., Brussels]. The story follows her life at Mme. Beck's school, where she teaches English, and follows her relationships with others and several romances. The novel tries to be a gothic, with the appearance of a spectral nun, who had connection with Mme. Beck's. The book is uneven; some parts drag and others fly by.

[ctpress_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A few thoughts:
- Villette didn’t capture my imagination as either [Shirley] or [Jane Eyre].
- I never really warmed up to the heroine Lucy Snowe (no pun intended) - she fascinated me, but not enough.
- Liked the gothic elements which created an eerie feeling throughout the novel - the appearence of a ghost - a white nun….
- Liked also the descriptions of Lucy’s loneliness and despair and her deliberate attempts to be an independent free spirit.

[petroglyph_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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 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, designed to trigger goodwill: showy Catholic suffering used as emotional manipulation while pretending to high morality. Somebody is suffering beyond necessity; therefore the issue 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.

[siok-76276 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lucy Snowe is an inconsistent character, and even a tad incredulous for being so private and keeping things so close to her chest. But this is what I can identify with. How many times have I kept quiet and not acknowledge that I was there? I know you? Indeed, a character created almost a century ago still has resonance today. And this is why these books are classics.

[jennysbookbag.com · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was surprised that I liked this one.

[laugal-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am not able to finish this book at this time and hope to get back to it in the fall.I read half and did enjoy the story and the writing...so far. I plan to go back.

[cemagoc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jane Eyre will forever surpass all Bronte novels, in my mind. But this, this, is a beautiful novel.

[lindseyrivers · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was slow for a good majority of the book, but I sped through the last few chapters. I encourage those that take this on to consider the times this is written in and how singular Lucy is to be as strong and independent, self aware yet un-self conscious, brave yet not reckless. She is truly a heroine for the ages.

[baswood · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[Villette] by Charlotte Bronte
It is hard to believe that Villette was published in 1853 and yet its style is so very reminiscent of its era. It reads like a Victorian novel but one with hardly any plot to speak of, there are ghosts, there are love stories, there are strict manners and men rule the world, but we see this through the eyes of Lucy Snowe a very unlikely hero. It is a psychological study first and foremost but one in which the protagonist thinks and acts according to the proscribed values of the world in which she lives. It is the psychological aspect and the unremarkable story line that seems to portend towards modernism, but Bronte’s writing locks it firmly in the world of the Victorian novel.

Lucy Snowe as an unmarried women without any prospects must work for her living. She is not particularly attractive and so without good looks or money she has little to offer on the marriage market, especially at a time when there were far more young women than men in the world. She has just enough money to seek her fortune on the continent and has some luck in finding a place as an assistant in a girls school in the country of Labassecoeur. Labassecour to all intents and purposes is France and I would imagine that Bronte made it an imaginary country because of the anti-French feel of much of her novel. A major theme of the novel is how hard work, diligence and knowing ones place in society is essential for an unmarried woman to survive. Lucy is quiet and undemonstrative on the surface with an iron will that keeps her feelings in check, but inside her head which is where most of the story takes place she is both vulnerable and passionate. She does not allow herself to fall in love and yet her inner feelings are centred on two extraordinary men and we follow her hopes her desires and her confusion as she tries to come to terms with her feelings and her position in society.

It is a novel where we have to rely on other peoples observations of Lucy Snowe to get a more balanced picture. Lucy herself is not so much unreliable as perplexed in her thoughts and as she is telling her story in the first person then the reader must sift the evidence. Bronte’s point in presenting such a character is to demonstrate how difficult it was for a woman to make her way in such a closed (to her) society. How should an intelligent woman come to terms with her situation? Paulina a childhood friend says of Lucy:

“Lucy I wonder if anybody will comprehend you all together”

and:

M Paul to Lucy “You want so much checking, regulating, and keeping down” This idea of keeping down never left M Pauls head; the most habitual subjugation would, in my case, have failed to relieve him of it.

Here is the rub because not only must Lucy keep her vulnerability and passions in check she must also keep her rebellious spirit from surfacing too often. Those people who know her best perceive this in her as do the readers who are privy to her thoughts and her occasional outspoken and prickly comments to others.

Bronte was able to develop other themes through Lucy that were topical at her time of writing. I have already mentioned the anti French feeling, but this is also entwined with an inbuilt anti-catholicism. Lucy is fiercely protestant and finds herself living and working in a catholic school and falling in love with a catholic man. It is no accident that the school in which she works is run a little like a police state with Madame Beck keeping her pupils and teachers under constant surveillance. M Paul also boasts of how he spies on all the pupils and teachers and this is likened to the catholic religion that is seen as one of control and manipulation of peoples souls. Lucy must rebel against this, but she needs to use all her resources so as not to fall foul of the system.

Bronte’s metaphor for a troubled mind is a storm, sometimes a storm at sea and these always precipitate a major event in Lucy’s life. M Paul’s character is perceived as stormy and at the end of the novel it is a storm that represents a slightly ambiguous ending. Bronte’s writing here and in the ghost scenes is most representative of what we have come to know as Victorian gothic. However it is the exploration of the thoughts and feelings of Lucy Snowe that takes this novel out of the general run of novels of it’s time. It is insightful, it is thought provoking, it is not perfect as one imagines a novel should be, but it is one of those books that I look forward to re-reading. 5 stars.

[starbox_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"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 "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.

[ginnywoolf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Look, Virginia Woolf called it Bronte's "finest novel," and George Eliot wrote, "Villette! Villette! Have you read it? It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power." I couldn't agree more. I was fortunate enough to read this is the first English course to get me hooked on 19th century British lit. We read it over the course of three weeks, so it was the perfect way to digest the magic of Villette. A love story that is far more rewarding than that of Jane Eyre (which I also love), Villette is a treasure.

[tangotango-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very passionate and convincing, this work is rather powerful and sad. I could relate very well to the heroine.

[klmesoftly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a big fan of Jane Eyre, so this had been on my to-read list for a while. I'm glad I finally picked it up! I liked that the novel dwells so much on friendships; ultimately the romantic elements feel a bit like an afterthought or obligation, which is fairly unique for a novel from this time period.

[julie10reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emmanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a teacher in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully moving study of isolation and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances. Summary HPL

Like her predecessor, Jane Eyre, Lucy is an intelligent young woman with a rich interior life whose innate superiority few are privileged to witness. Like Jane Eyre, Lucy's spirit, or soul as Miss Bronte might have called it, is already mature when we first meet her. The plot arc describes her travails as she secretly hopes for the partner who will discover and embrace the passionate creature raging beneath the armour of quiet, self-effacing manners. In the style of many Victorian novels, VILLETTE unspools its 611 pages slowly-- however if we think of a modern equivalent, say DOWNTON ABBEY, we will appreciate the 19th century reader's delight in every architectural detail, every social nuance. The passages in French, however, become onerous...

Where JANE EYRE might be considered autobiographical fantasy--a life worthy of Charlotte Bronte--VILLETTE is closer to Miss Bronte's actual history. Dr. John has been linked to the Brontes' publisher George Smith; M. Emmanuel to Charlotte's Professor in Brussels, M. Heger. The loneliness, the isolation Lucy experiences in the fictional town of Villette is formidable; Miss Bronte remembered the feelings vividly as she wrote VILLETTE. She was also expressing the impact of the void created by the recent deaths of her 2 younger sisters (within six months of each other) as well as her brother. Charlotte Bronte was the sole survivor of 6 children: the care of her ailing--demanding--father devolved onto her.

I enjoyed the novel as a memoir of Miss Bronte's youth, when love, equality and independence seemed to hover at the horizon.

8 out of 10 Highly recommended to to devotes of JANE EYRE and to readers of historical fiction and Victorian literature.

[roblong_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lucy Snowe, adrift in her life in England, travels abroad to French-speaking Villette, and becomes a teacher.

On wiki it says that in Villette (apparently modelled on Brussels), Lucy is "drawn into adventure and romance." This is an exaggeration. For pretty much all of its 650 pages, basically nothing happens in this book. Lucy has some fairly minor ups and downs in her life, and is associated with people who are in much the same boat. It is a report on a mundane life among mundane lives. And yet it's excellent. It's incredibly well observed psychologically, and really creeps up on you. In a largely eventless, plotless book, with an entirely passive narrator, the little ups and downs become as all consuming for the reader as they do for the character. I'm not quite sure how Bronte pulls it off, but it's very good indeed. Loved the ending, too.

One note - some of the dialogue is in French, so if (like me), you don't speak it, get an edition (unlike me) that translates it.

[bayardus-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Overall a weaker effort than Jane Eyre, as Villette is dragged down by characters that aren't compelling and random asides about the superiority of British Protestantism that were annoying and out of place. Whereas Jane Eyre featured a unique protagonist and a series of atmospheric settings, Villette's protagonist is as bland as her namesake, and the setting of a fictional French city is rendered all but meaningless by the focus of the book.

Lucy Snowe serves as the main character of Villette, a protagonist so passive for the first few chapters that it is hard to ascribe to her any characteristics. Contrast this with the opening chapters of Jane Eyre, where Jane's character is established swiftly and firmly. Eventually it emerges that Snowe is usually quiet and unassertive, except for instances where she harps on the superiority of her country and religion, or the rare instance where she is an outright jerk to people. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time Snowe criticizes catholicism and French culture while expounding upon the virtues of the British and the Protestant faith I'd have at least $50. At one point after going to the opera Snowe laments that she preferred Scottish street musicians. Behold, ladies and gentlemen, a 1850s hipster! It's never clear why anyone else would pay any attention to Lucy Snowe, much less actively want to spend time with her, but over the course of the story various people befriend her (or try to) and in time she even attracts romantic attention. Because she oscillated between being a nonentity and being actively unlikable Snowe's journey never hooked me. Unfortunately almost none the rest of the characters in Villette proved engaging either.

Dr. John Graham Bretton serves as the male lead character for the first half of the novel, as well as an apparent potential love interest. He's largely defined by two things: he's a doctor, and he really loves his mother. The former characteristic is given no depth, while the latter characteristic is perhaps given too much. Stories can have an abnormally strong attachment between parent and child and be entertaining, just look at Emma and her father's relationship in Austen's Emma, but in Villette Graham just comes off as a momma's boy. It does little to make him appealing. The second male lead, Paul, is substantially worse. Despite the fact that the book periodically described Paul as having good qualities and as being loved by his students, he comes off in the book as a grade-A jackass. Prudish, reducing the narrator to tears on multiple occasions, intolerant and controlling, he's an almost impressively unlikable character, yet Brontë believes that she has made him sympathetic by the close of the story. She really hasn't. Note that these two male leads never really both appear as fleshed out characters at the same time in this novel: the book starts out focusing on Graham, only to later shift to Paul and essentially abandons Graham for many chapters. When the book picks up on Graham's story again later on Paul is in turn abandoned, making it clear that Brontë can only give life to one male character at a time (also true in Jane Eyre, with Rochester and Rivers never appearing as developed characters together).

The sole character that I liked was Ginevra, a shallow and foolish young woman to be sure, but she's passionate and active in stark contrast to the other characters' blandness. She reminded me of Daisy from The Great Gatsby- you know she'd be a terrible match, but you can see why characters would fall in love with her anyway. Brontë tries to cast Ginevra as a character with traits to avoid, not emulate, but her appearances were a breath of fresh air compared to the stuffy boredom brought on by the rest of the characters. You might think that because the story takes place in a city there would be other characters worth discussing, but you'd be wrong. The city of Villette, and indeed the entire world of this book, seems to be populated by only a handful of characters, most of which are familiar archetypes or lacking any depth. Jane Eyre did the same thing with its small cast, but with the isolated setting of that book the sparse population made more sense. Here the world feels strangely depopulated and empty.

The setting isn't much better than the characters. Though set in France, the superiority of the British is brought up so frequently that it feels as though Brontë chose a foreign setting just so that she had more opportunities to glorify her homeland. France mainly serves as an excuse to throw in the occasional line or paragraph of French. It's easy enough French that I could muddle through it, but why Brontë chose to include these passages without a translation escapes me. As discussed above, the city feels rather empty as well. The school Snowe teaches at is atmospheric, but I've noticed that Brontë's settings tend to be atmospheric despite her writing and not because of it. Brontë sets up evocative scenes, like in the opening chapters of this books where rooms seem not inhabited, but haunted by a small child, or where Snowe's life is confined for years to two hot stuffy rooms, but once these scenes are set up Brontë goes back to writing in her usual style, doing very little to keep in the reader's mind the creepy surroundings that she originally introduced. Once she turns back to plot progression the atmosphere of Brontë's settings starts to slip away. For a great take on the atmosphere of a Brontë book I'd highly recommend the 2011 adaptation of Jane Eyre, which focuses on the settings with some great cinematography.

So overall this book fell flat to me because of a largely uninteresting cast of characters and a setting that had most of its potential wasted. After I stopped caring about the unlikable Lucy Snowe there was little else for me to focus on in the story. Jane Eyre was well worth reading, while Villette is well worth skipping.

[lisa.isselee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was told before I started reading this book, that Charlotte Brontë only ever wrote one good book, that book being Jane Eyre. So I didn't have big expectations for it. It wasn't love romantic like Jane Eyre but it had family and friendship love. I enjoyed how the main character was more of a spectator throughout the whole book.
I wouldn't agree with people saying it's a bad book, it's different and most enjoyable in it's own way.

[wassilissa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

1853 wird Charlotte Brontes Roman Villette veröffentlicht. Das Leben der Autorin ist selbst tragisch genug und würde wohl auch Stoff für einen Roman abgeben.
In Vilette geht es um Lucy Snowe, eine alleinstehende junge Frau , die in einer Schule im französischen Villette als Lehrerin arbeitet. Das Buch wirft die Frage auf, wie man damals als Frau unabhängig leben kann - es werden mehrere Lebensentwürfe vorgestellt, die verwitwete Schulleiterin als selbständige Frau, die kokette Ginevra als eitle, oberflächliche Frau. Lucy selbst schafft es, unabhängig zu leben - trotz tiefer Gefühle geht sie keine Beziehung ein.
Ich fand das Buch interessant, gerade auch aus der Zeit heraus, hatte aber schon manchmal Schwierigkeiten am Ball zu bleiben.

Charlotte Bronte's novel Villette was published in the year 1853. The life of the author herself is tragic enough and would also give room for a novel.
"Villette" is about Lucy Snowe, a young woman who works in a school in the French Villette as a teacher. The book raises the question if it is possible to live independently as a woman at that time - several concepts of life are presented: the widowed headmistress as an independent woman, the coquettish Ginevra as vain, superficial woman. Lucy even manages to live independently - in spite of deeper feelings she does not take any relationship.
I found the book interesting, especially as a document of that time.