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    Villette
    Villette
    Villette
    Ebook712 pages11 hours

    Villette

    By Charlotte Bronte

    4/5

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    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.
    This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

    Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes



    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXist Publishing
    Release dateMar 3, 2016
    ISBN9781681956572
    Author

    Charlotte Bronte

    Charlotte Brontë, born in 1816, was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters, and one of the nineteenth century's greatest novelists. She is the author of Villette, The Professor, several collections of poetry, and Jane Eyre, one of English literature's most beloved classics. She died in 1855.

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    Reviews for Villette

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      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.
    • 1/5
      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!
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS REVIEWTL;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.
    • 3/5
       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.
    • 3/5
      Unlike 'Jane Eyre', I felt this novel was more 'uncanny', as if there was an air of mystery from the start, in the narrative. It is a tale of learning from experience and maturity, yet it read less well than 'Jane Eyre'. Lucy has less character than Jane, and she is led by her emotions, but, unlike Jane, she does not have an ounce of anger or willfulness in her. In this, I found her less attractive. The town of Villette feels like its own microcosm, with a strong sense of displacement, as if it was the 'Twilight Zone'. If this is what nineteenth-century English people thought about French villages, well, I feel sorry for them, as, like in 'The Avengers' TV series (with its weird village locals and village greens, or 'evil' lords and hellfire clubs), this is just a construct of their imagination and characters can be distorted as to make them look unnatural. In this, I think I will leave this book be and read other works - it felt too weird to be enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      There are so many things to like about Charlotte Bronte's "Villette" and yet I can't say I truly loved this book. It's particularly interesting since the book in so many ways parallels Bronte's own life while she was living in Belgium. This is probably interested me the most, having read a biography about Bronte earlier this year.The heroine of "Villette" is Lucy Snowe, a somewhat cold, but determined woman who is left to find her own fortune in the world and travels to Villette to (eventually) become an English teacher. As a narrator, she rarely tells what she knows -- or the entirety of her thoughts-- so it's up to the reader to tease them out from what she does say. There are various instances of unrequited love woven throughout the book. Of course, comparisons to Bronte's more famous "Jane Eyre" are inevitable. Lucy Snowe is a much more realistic character-- much more well-rounded and without that inherent goodness that causes Jane to grate a bit. However, "Villette" seems to drag on more... little happens and Lucy Snowe is generally so reserved that it is hard to connect with any of the characters, including the narrator herself.While I liked "Villette" overall, it definitely doesn't displace "Jane Eyre" as my favorite Charlotte Bronte book.
    • 5/5
      I tried reading Villette once, a number of years ago. I got about halfway through and stopped; maybe I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it very much. About a year and a half ago, when I moved into my apartment, I came across my copy and threw it on TBR Mountain, “to read sometime in the future.”Villette, as is Jane Eyre, is based on personal experience: Charlotte Bronte famously spent a year teaching English in Brussels. The novel is set in the fictional country of Labassecours, based on Belgium (at first I thought the setting of the book was some extension of Angria, the kingdom she and her siblings created when they were children). Lucy Snowe comes to Villette from England in search of a job and almost accidentally ends up at the door of Madame Beck’s pensione, or school for young ladies, where she initially gets a job as nursemaid and then teacher.Lucy is an introverted, isolated, sarcastic heroine; she is extremely practical but not good at showing emotion. In fact, I think she’d rather just pretend she doesn’t have them. In addition, she mocks her “friends” mercilessly. All told, I found her completely relatable, even though she’s not the classical example of a perfect heroine. The back of the book promises two relationships: one with a doctor who frequents the pensione and the other with an irascible, emotional teacher. The relationship with Dr. Bretton fizzles out; Lucy’s feelings for him mellow with time and fade out with loss of contact. Her relationship with M. Paul Emmanuel is far more interesting because Lucy herself doesn’t realize her feelings. But Bronte is good at showing the reader how Lucy feels, which means that Lucy is perhaps not the most reliable of narrators. But I like her flaws; they make her much for relatable, especially since I see a lot of myself in Lucy. I liked, or appreciated, her struggle to be independent.Some of the plot elements fall flat (the ghost story is disappointing), and Bronte has an annoying habit of introducing her characters without actually referring to them by name for a couple of sentences. But overall I loved this book. Considering how much I love Jane Eyre, it’s amazing that I couldn’t get into Villette the first time I tried it. JE is a good introduction to Charlotte Bronte’s novels, but Villette is well worth a read.
    • 5/5
      Virginia Woolf considered Villette Bronte’s “finest novel” and George Eliot preferred it to Jane Eyre. The friend who recommended it to me feels that way too, and in her review on Goodreads called it a “a beautifully constructed novel, with a complex and often frustrating narrator and quite possibly the most elegant, restrained examination of unrequited love that I have read.” I’d agree with that assessment, even if Jane Eyre remains first in my affections, possibly because Jane Eyre is an old friend, possibly because it’s the more romantic, warming book--even if Villette is arguably the better, more mature book. Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte’s first published novel, Villette her last. If I weren’t comparing it to such a beloved book I’d give Villette five stars--I’d give it 4.99 stars were that possible. The prose often elicited writer’s envy in me because of its beauty and piercing insight. Its protagonist and narrator Lucy Snowe is self-effacing, reserved, my friend even describes her as “repressed” and at first she seemed to me as chilly as her name, and in the pitilessness and sharpness of her judgements it seemed to me she would be an uncomfortable companion--but she did grow on me. As did Professor Paul Emanuel--he reminded me a lot of Severus Snape of Harry Potter, and I can’t help but wonder if he influenced that character given the rather rare name of “Ginevra” appears in both works suggesting Rowling was familiar with the novel. Madame Beck is quite the character too. Few 19th century novels have a woman character quite so pragmatic, capable and unsentimental. That said this might not be for everyone. This is a typical Victorian novel in oh so many ways. I never, ever found it a slog, but some reviewers complained of its leisurely pace and of being overly descriptive, and that “nothing happens.” None of that ever bothered me, because to the extent those criticisms are just they are as much strengths as flaws. The story is very interior, very concerned with the small intricacies of character and relationships and the mind and heart of Lucy Snowe and others, but it’s psychologically complex and brilliantly insightful and often very vivid in its pictures of people. A few things did annoy me, though not enough to lower the novel in my estimation. First, this is partly autobiographical, because though Bronte uses the fictional name of “Villette” for the city and the fictional name of “Labassecour” for the kingdom, this is obviously set in the French-speaking Brussels, Belgium where Bronte studied and taught in a boarding school. And she makes little accommodation for non-French speakers. There are frequent passages of untranslated French in the novel--in my edition they’re translated in the endnotes, but it was irksome to go back and forth--it interrupted the flow. I’d search for an edition where the translations appear in either parenthesis in the text or footnotes--assuming you don’t know French. Another aspect I found annoying was the unrelenting anti-Catholicism of the novel. I’m an atheist but I was raised Catholic and educated in Catholic schools, and I admit I’m none too fond of the kind of person who refers to it as “Papism” or “Popery” or “Romanism,” sees Jesuits as sinister, and thinks Protestantism is oh-so-much-more enlightened the way Lucy Snowe (and Bronte?) does here. And finally, like many 19th Century writers such as Hugo and Dickens, Bronte seemingly doesn’t see unlikely coincidences as a plotting flaw--indeed I suspect those writers see such instances as the Hand of God given how they resort to them--but as a 21st Century reader I can’t help but find that aspect eye-rolling. That said, I can’t stress enough what a wonderful, readable novel Villette is--heartbreaking, so be warned--but oh so very well worth knowing.Another warning--if you have the edition with the introduction including an interview with A.S. Byatt, don't read that introduction until afterwards--you'll hit major spoilers within paragraphs.
    • 5/5
      In the introduction to the second volume of Absolute Sandman, Alisa Kwitney defined literature as fiction that creates "a taste for itself" rather than simply satisfying pre-existing tastes.

      I read this definition the same night I finished Vilette, and thought it went a great way to explaining why I love nineteenth-century novels. Written just as the novel was getting into stride, novels like Vilette are bold and striking because their authors knew they were being more ambitious than much of what had come before, and knew better than to play by the rules. The Brontës are of course a special case because they were women literally playing by their own rules, writing fiction under male pseudonyms for a readership which they had little in common with. (Of course at the same time the Brontës are writing gothic novels, but they are no more true gothic novels than Sandman is a true horror comic.)

      So Vilette is long, winding, off-kilter, and occasionally a little sentimental or frustrating, but it's a fantastic novel, because it's so rich and convinced of its own richness. It's a theological inquiry into the meaning of suffering, an off-kilter courtship novel, an orphan story, a psychological study, a gothic novel rich with symbolism, a story about gender roles, a story about nationality and faith, and a postmodern novel with an unreliable narrator who dares to end her tale with a piece of metafiction which led to infuriated letters from Brontë's close friends.

      There is only one Vilette. It's a really good novel. Go read it!

      ETA: Oh, I did mean to put in a little note about how you will spend like a fifth of the novel flipping to the end to read French-to-English translations. I have some basic French reading comprehension but there is an awful lot of it in this one. I suppose it simply was very common to speak French in 1850s England. It's a common assumption of many novels of the period but Vilette is one of the most extreme. I bet it would be really enjoyable for confident bilinguals, though, because she does such an interesting job code-switching.
    • 5/5
      Why on God's green earth does everyone read Jane Eyre, but not this amazing book?
    • 4/5
      The plot was full of rather unbelievable chance encounters and re-encounters, descriptions were slow to very slow. The character studies, however, were flawless.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      I had two problems with this book: the untranslated sections of French, to which the remnants of my schoolgirl French were often unequal, and the anti-Catholic propaganda. Other than that, I enjoyed the book.
    • 4/5
      Although Charlotte Bronte is probably best known for Jane Eyre, many people consider Villette her best novel. There are definitely many similarities between the two. The heroine of Villette, Lucy Snowe is also an orphan who shares many of Jane's best qualities - she's intelligent, fiercely independent, and self-reliant. After having a difficult life in England, Lucy goes to France to teach English at a boarding school. Much of the plot of the novel is similar to Jane Eyre - Lucy works hard against difficult odds, she falls in love with a man, who comes across as rude and difficult initially, and there is even a bit of gothic mystery with possible sightings of the ghost of a murdered nun. But how these two stories differ is in the inner characteristics of the two heroines. Jane is upbeat and confident and never shows a bit of weakness. Whereas Lucy, on the exterior, appears strong and confident, much of the story revolves around Lucy's sadness and depression over her life - being alone and unloved. The writing of the story is excellent and the mood is often dark and somber. Although this may be a better written novel, the mood is often morose and dark.
    • 5/5
      Lucy Snowe is an orphaned girl who finds herself taking a job as an instructor at a French boarding school in the town of Villette. Throughout the course of the novel we’re introduced to a wide selection of characters: the spoiled young Polly, handsome Dr. John, Lucy’s cruel employer Madame Beck and her nephew the cranky professor M. Paul Emanuel, the insufferable coquette Ginerva Fanshawe and more. This novel is famous in literary circles because of the illusive heroine. Lucy keeps secret from the reader and never lets us completely into her world. There’s so much we don’t know about her and at times that can be frustrating, but I do love her acerbic nature. She’s often short or condescending; she sometimes calls people out on their bad choices in love or challenges them in other ways. Lucy is beyond interesting. I also love the fact that her job is important to her and that throughout the book the pursuit of education is valued. Lucy’s character reminds me so much of Esther from Bleak House. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that I read both books in the same year, but it’s not just that. Both women are quiet and reserved, never giving the reader a complete picture of who they are. Both are instrumental in getting to close friends together, both fall for someone, but assume they can’t ever be together for one reason or another. I just kept having flashbacks. I checked the dates and the books were actually published in the same year, though Dickens’ was serialized the year before. I doubt either author was aware of the other’s novel when they were writing their own. In so many ways I can understand why Villette is considered Charlotte’s masterpiece. The characters and their relationships are much more complicated and the tone is much darker. I also think the writing is exquisite, even better than in her earlier work. Villette really was way ahead of its time. But I will also say it didn’t impact me in the same way that Jane Eyre did and I think a big part of that is my own personality. Most of the people I know who have loved Villette more than Jane Eyre identify with Lucy in a very personal way. They are usually quieter, more introspective and reserved and that’s just not me. I’m a bit of a chatterbox and I tend to be incredibly social. I do love being at home alone and curling up with a good book, but I like being out and about with my friends just as much. So it was harder for me to connect with Lucy. It’s not that Jane Eyre is Miss Social Butterfly, but she does stand up for herself and she’s a bit of a rebel. I love her open dialogue with the reader. I felt like I knew her in a way that I never did with Lucy. I missed the humor you find in Jane Eyre. I felt like the chemistry between Jane and Mr. Rochester was palpable and I never felt that way with Lucy and either of her love interests. I also couldn’t connect with the all-encompassing loneliness that plagued Lucy. I think it’s unfair to judge this book entirely in comparison to Jane Eyre, but I can’t help myself. I couldn’t seem to stop. I think Villette really embodied the pain Charlotte was going through at that time. It was the last novel she completed and at that point all of her sisters had died. She was alone and heartbroken and that darkness seeped into her writing. SPOILERSThe ending totally took me by surprise. I know some people say it’s ambiguous, but to me it was pretty clear (maybe that makes me pessimistic). I couldn’t help thinking WTF on that last page. It’s not that the writing wasn’t beautiful or fitting, but still I felt like I was punched in the stomach. I wanted Lucy to have a bit of happiness in the second half of her life and I felt like she was so close but never quite got it. Her happiest years were those anticipating the life she was never able to have with M. Paul Emanuel; that broke my heart. SPOILERS OVERBOTTOM LINE: It’s a must for anyone who loves the Bronte sisters or Victorian classics. It didn’t trump Jane Eyre as my personal favorite, but it’s a more challenging book in many ways and one that I know I’ll reread in the future. “If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep-inflicted lacerations never heal-cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge-so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo; caressing kindnesses-loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.” 
    • 5/5
      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 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!
    • 5/5
      I was suprised by how much I loved this book. I haven't (gasp) read Jane Eyre, so I wasn't sure what to expect from Bronte, except that it might be a bit of a slog since it is 19th-century British literature.The main character, Lucy Snowe, is a hard nut to crack, but once I started to appreciate her tone and manner of describing people and situations, I soon began to see what a passionate and admirable person was underneath the staid and proper exterior that was presented. For a book written in 1853, Lucy Snowe is ages ahead of her time -- a single woman working to support herself in the world without the assistance of a husband or family. She is brave and smart, and you end up rooting for her right through to the end.I loved this passage: "Behind the house at the Rue Fossette there was a garden - large, considering that it lay in the heart of a city, and to my recollection at this day it seems pleasant: but time, like distance, lends to certain scenes an influence so softening; and where all is stone around, blank wall and hot pavement, how precious seems one shrub, how lovely an enclosed and planted spot of ground!"Lovely, lovely book. Also, it makes me want to brush up on my French.
    • 3/5
      This story went on and on and on. For the most part it was a very slow read- I wasn't into the characters, not much happened for a long time, and, it just kept going for 556 pages! Lucy Snowe almost never stands up for herself, and I was rather frustrated with her early relationship with M. Paul. That got better at the very end, but still... Things took a long time to come together, and I have to admit that I chastised her many times for her inaction. I was also highly disturbed by the ending- this story is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical, which makes me wonder how that related to her biography. I kept wanting to change Lucy's actions- to make her stand up for herself, to explain things to her, to remind her that she is not some sort of worthless slug or something. So was Charlotte Bronte completely miserable during this period of her life? Don't read this if you expect something light or enjoyable...
    • 5/5
      I totally love this book. It has mystery, romance, and ghosts.
    • 5/5
      Lucy Snow, the star-crossed narrator of Villette, is a destitute, lonely, and intelligent young woman who ventures into a vaguely sinister francophone country in order to find work and forge some of the thickest emotional armor in British literature. She is also a devious and unapologetic liar. You can never escape Lucy’s mind, but neither can you trust it. This result is an intense story that simmers just below the boiling point. But what saves the book from turning into an overheated psychological chessgame is the inexorable, heartbreaking, and yet ultimately redeeming need for love. Indeed, it contains one of the most passionate romances ever written. How to find love without letting others, including the loved one, manipulate and exploit our need for love? How to write a novel that is searlingly emotional without being sentimental or melodramatic? That is Charlotte Bronte’s achievement, and Lucy’s painful but necessary defensive maneuvers taught me how to survive some of the more bleak periods in my life.
    • 3/5
      Wow - this book took me forever to read. I admire Charlotte Bronte's writing style, her word choices are wonderful. However, the story itself wasn't nearly as interesting as the back cover described. This is a semi-autobiographical book of Charlotte's life when she lived in Belgium. What a sad and lonely life it must have been. Lucy Snowe was the main character in this story and it starts when she was young (around 10) and living in England. The majority of the rest of the book takes place in the city of Villette where she serves as a teacher in a girls school. She meets up with people from her childhood and their company gives her some sort of small social life. Otherwise most of her time is spent at the school. There she meets and falls in love with an eccentric professor. This book is not nearly as enjoyable as "Jane Eyre" but I'm glad I read it. But I did find it quite tedious in many parts.
    • 3/5
      This was a difficult book to read, though I did enjoy it - it's Brontë's writing style that makes it tough. But the subject matter and themes are also a bit dense and hard-going, and this novel won't appeal to most people, I imagine.The story is based loosely on Brontë's own experiences in Belgium, and there are striking similarities to her previous and well-known work Jane Eyre. Lucy Snow in Vilette is also reserved, an orphan, and someone who prefers to watch rather than participate in the world. But even while she observes the people around her, she is being observed, making this a great book for fans of the Gaze in literary theory & criticism. Ultimately, I'd say that Vilette is like Jane Eyre squared, and a good deal more interesting for it. But even so, it was difficult to read and rather long, and I prefer Jane to Lucy. The final statements of each book are nearly the same, in any case: for the heroines to thrive, they must have the power and control in their lives (ie: Jane must be Rochester's caretaker, Lucy must become her own mistress).
    • 5/5
      Villette was the first Charlotte Brontë (or any Brontë sister) novel that I read. I was told it is a lot less popular and a lot darker than Jane Eyre. But the darkness of the book is what made me absolutely love it. That and its narrator.Lucy Snowe is the definition of an unreliable narrator, with her manipulations and lacunae, but who doesn't love to distrust a narrator? She, as a narrator, is what makes this novel fascinating. Though she is melancholy and pained as a character and seems to never step up and act or stand up for herself when it counts, she is skillful and witty in her story telling. She lies to you and tells you she's doing it, she keeps things from you sometimes without you realizing it, and she intentionally refuses to tell you major pieces of the plot and her life. It definitely makes for a unique read and keeps the reader trying to figure her out from page one until the end.But the dark and depressing parts of Lucy, and of the plot, are very well-written as well. For me, her story was relatable and inspired sympathy. I really came to love and root for Brontë's narrator, even if the author herself despised the young woman.
    • 4/5
      Villette is the semi autobiographical story of Lucy Snowe, a young woman of 23 who travels to Villette, a fictional town but modeled after Brussels, Belgium, where the author and her sister did travel for teaching positions. Ms Snowe does not know French, travels alone and is fortunate to find a position as a teacher in a boarding school because she speaks English. While traveling she befriends a young, shallow woman by the name of Ginevra Fanshawe, reunites with her Godmother and her son and becomes friends with M. Paul Carlos David Emanuel. She also runs into a former acquaintance named Polly, a serious young woman of high virtue. This is a Gothic romance and there are spectres of a nun and love that is met with adversity. Themes include the clash of protestantism and catholicism and gender roles and isolation.
      This is the author's third novel, the first being Jane Eyre. The first is probably a better story in scope but this novel is enjoyable, the protagonist has many admirable characteristics and the men in the book are generally of good qualities. This novel was criticized at the time for not being suitably feminine in portraying Lucy Snowe, therefore I think the author was successful in getting her social commentary on the life of single women in Victorian England heard.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      I liked it better the first time I read it. Bronte gets a little carried away with the flowery Victorian language, and the romance was not as compelling as I remembered.
    • 5/5
      I have different editions of this book in every place I've lived, just in case. It is my safety net and my high wire all in one. This edition has no notes, so you have to translate the French and German yourself, kids, but it does have an intro by Angela Carter. Hard to believe that until 35 years ago, this book was out of print...
    • 4/5
      I've had this book on my shelves for years, and I finally plowed through it. It took almost four weeks, which is a long time in book years, for me, anyway. I just had such a hard time getting into the protagonist's head for the first three-quarters of it or so, and I disliked most of the members of the "supporting cast", with one exception, that being Mrs. Bretton. Finally, however, Lucy Snowe really clicked for me, and the rest of the book was quite enjoyable. It wasn't Jane Eyre, but on the strength of those chapters the book was able to stand alone on its own merits for me. I was touched by the growing relationship between Lucy and the man she loved; I was glad to see some of the uselessly annoying characters come to have a raison d'être before the last page. I won't mention the one thing that really bothered me about the story, even after I really began to enjoy it, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but if it weren't for that one thing I'd probably have given this book a better rating.
    • 5/5
      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.

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    Villette - Charlotte Bronte

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