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Title: Villette (Signet Classics)
ISBN: 0451529227
Author:
Charlotte Bront??
Publicate Date: 2004-02-03
Publish: 2004-02-03
List Price: $5.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $2.57
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $5.95
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A Great book on character development
In my view a five star book is one that touches your heart and leaves you better off as a human being. For me, Charlotte Bronte's Villette is just such a book.
It doesn't start out that way. The novel is divided into three parts which I might label, despair, hope and fulfillment. The story is told in the first person by the book's protagonist, Lucy Snowe. At the start Lucy is 14 years old and, bereft of parents, is living in 19th century England with her godmother, Mrs. Bretton and her 16-year-old son, John Graham, a good-hearted, fun loving boy. Into this household comes 7-year-old Polly whose mother has just died and whose father is arranging to move to Europe. Polly takes to the antics of John Graham but largely ignores the kind efforts of the bland Lucy. This beginning sets the tone for Lucy as a retiring introvert with low self-esteem and expectations from life.
The arrangement soon breaks up as Polly and her father leave and Lucy sets out to begin her working life. She finds a job taking care of a disabled woman and appears ready to settle for (she says) 30 years of living a marginal life. But fate intervenes when the woman dies and Lucy sets out again to find a means of support. She decides to go to France and on the way over meets a young girl who attends a school for girls in Villette and who, accordingly, suggests that Lucy seek employment there. Arriving at night, and in one of the many unrealistic coincidences that pervade the book, Lucy finds the school run by Mrs. Beck, a capable but prying women. Initially Lucy is employed to take care of Mrs. Beck's three small children but she soon is given the job of English teacher. The year progresses, but Lucy's negative worldview dominates. She criticizes the other teachers, and in particular the professor of literature, M. Paul. The novel reaches an initial climax at the end of the first part (Chapter 15,The Long Vacation) when left alone at the school for the summer Lucy becomes very despondent and, wandering out into a storm goes to a Catholic church, "confesses" to a priest and then going out collapses on the street. In another coincidence, she is found by the priest and a doctor just happens to be nearby.
Part two begins with Lucy waking up in seemingly familiar surroundings. She discovers that the doctor who rescued her is not other that John Graham, now in the ten years that have elapsed since she first lived with him has become "Dr. John" and has moved to Villette with his mother. Lucy stays with Mrs. Bretton and Dr. John for some time until she recovers physically. But she also begins to evolve psychologically. She finds comfort in the friendship these two people offer her, but her happiness is still a result of the actions of others. Upon recovery she returns to the school and begins to receive a series of letters from Dr. John. She treasures these letters and they become her only source of happiness.
At this point Polly and her father, now improbably a count, re-enter the story and Dr. John meets her by rescuing her from a fire at a theatre performance which he and Lucy attended. The inevitable happens and Polly and Dr. John fall in love. But here Lucy shows her continuing growth. She realizes that her happiness and fulfillment is not to be found with Dr. John and she puts away his letters.
As the story progresses through parts 2 and 3 it comes to focus on the evolving relationship between Lucy and Professor Paul. A number of circumstances develop, including the conflict between Lucy's Protestantism and the Roman Catholicism of M. Paul and the French people. Mysteries abound and things are never what they seem. As the book moves toward its climax relationships are settled and finally a bittersweet ending occurs.
I found the character development of Lucy and M. Paul in particular, and the evolution of their relationship, to be the most outstanding aspects of this book and the reason why, in the end, I gave it five stars. Bronte herself is said to have stated that she thought Villette to be her best work. Whether you will agree or not, it is certainly worth reading. Just do not give up on what seems at first to be a dull and uninspiring book featuring a dull and uninspiring main character. Finally I would say that one person gave this book a poor rating (one star) because "the plot turns on improbable circumstances." But Bronte was not especially concerned with plot in this novel; she was concerned with character development and in showing how a women in Victorian times could evolve. That is the meaning and greatness of the book, not the plot.
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2: French translations not included
This is a very good story with compelling characters. However it is difficult to get the full effect of the story if you aren't familiar with French and your edition doesn't have translations provided in the footnotes.
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3: One of my favorite books - "a sense of real wonder" arises from the beauty, passion, tragedy, and joy of this haunting novel
I now completely understand George Eliot's statement about Villette (Signet Classics): "I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading 'Villette' ... There is something preternatural about its power." I have just read this book for the first time and finished it a few days ago, yet I could not immediately write a review as I was still so submerged in the language, the story, and the characters, that I wanted to stay with them for a little while longer before I withdrew.
Virginia Woolf called Villette (Signet Classics) Bront??'s finest novel, and though this is the first of hers that I have read, it was indeed a true masterpiece. The intricate character descriptions were vivid and priceless, gentle even in their thoroughness, which cannot but seem harsh at times. There was a quiet and restrained passion to this novel and to Lucy Snowe which I found powerful and compelling. Bront??'s personifications were numerous - Death, Reason, Feeling, Hope, and her soul to name a few - and wonderfully imaginative and descriptive. Interesting to note were the comments and undertones disparaging Catholicism and the Catholic Church, and also the emphasis on the superiority of England, the English, and Englishwomen to their "continental" counterparts.
I must admit that though I was somewhat engaged at the beginning, I became subsequently less so. If this occurs with you also, please do not let it deter you, do not put the book away - I read the last 300 pages in one sitting. I found this novel very moving and in this last sitting experienced the range of human emotions - sorrow, as I despaired that Lucy would ever find happiness in her life; joy and anticipation for each interaction between M. Paul and Lucy (the scene in the evening when M. Paul sits at the table beside her and takes offense to her making room for him had me laughing out loud); surprise, despair, anger, and more - I do not want to give specifics on occurrences in the novel which I myself would not have wished to know before I read it.
At the beginning of her stay in Villette I found Lucy Snowe too placid and weak, but my opinion was reformed and though, as I said before, there is a quietness and restraint to her, there is also an underlying passion which is full and lively and which no one could possibly overlook. I loved Paul Emmanuel and even now, writing about him for this review, I cannot help but smile at my memory of him. He sees Lucy as others do not and I truly relished every clash - and increasing moments of accord - between them. Lucy says to herself on the subject of M. Paul: "You are well habituated to be passed by as a shadow in Life's sunshine: it is a new thing to see one testily lifting his hand to screen his eyes, because you tease him with an obtrusive ray" (p. 371).
BOTTOM LINE:
READ THIS BOOK!! I borrowed it from the library and the day after finishing it I ordered a copy, as I already feel a need to reread it and immerse myself in Villette (Signet Classics) once more.
SUMMARY (from the Penguin Classics back cover):
"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, a headmistress who spies on her staff, 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 Bront??'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."
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4: Compelling
Villette was Charlotte Bronte's last novel, written after she'd achieved significant recognition for Jane Eyre (actually, both novels were written under the pseudonym Currer Bell, and it wasn't until after her death that her real identity was revealed). Villette is said to be her most autobiographical novel, and it does appear to be with the many parallels that can be drawn between her life and the fictional life of Villette's protagonist, Lucy Snowe.
It's not an eventful book per se. It's being told as a past memory, by a now very old Lucy, as she retells the story of her life, at least in pieces - working as a companion to an old woman, then as a teacher in a French school for girls, and the relationships she forms with two men in particular (this is an almost an exact mirror of a point Charlotte's life). It's not a happy book, but not a sad one, either. It's just....real, I guess. I finished it with a sense of sympathy for Lucy and a little sadness for Charlotte. You get a very stark impression of Charlotte through Lucy: dignified and maybe a little humorless, if only because she's very serious about her reputation (Lucy as a teacher/headmistress, Charlotte as a writer), and disappointed in love.
One passage really stood out to me. Lucy is having an internal debate, and it's the old one we all have at one point or another: what we dream of as possibilities and how 'reason' mocks us: "'But if I feel, may I never express?' 'Never!' declared Reason. I groaned under her bitter sternness. Never - never - oh, hard word! This hag, Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination."
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5: Unswallowable
(*POSSIBLE spoiler alert, although I'm trying not to give away anymore than is necessary to explain what I didn't like about the book.)
I appreciate Victorian novels, among which Jane Eyre is one of my favorites. I am more than willing to make allowances for the conventions of Victorian novels, such as the plot turning on unreasonable coincidences. But Villette just has far too many coincidences to swallow. A poor, friendless English orphan crosses the Channel, and once on the other side she she meets any number of fellow Britons, every single one of whom she is closely related to in one way or another.
But worse, Charlotte Bronte is unfair to the reader in Villette -- she tells the reader that certain things are true, but which are completely implausible for any human being, and completely out of characters for the characters whom she has just sketched. I can't elaborate without giving away spoilers, but the loves, the hates, the jealousies, and the forgivenesses all ring false. This is just a trainwreck of a book, and can't hold a candle to Jane Eyre.
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