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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
3.5. I’m glad I read this but swithered a lot between liking and not liking it. The parts I liked I really liked, but there are a lot of extraneous, overlong, rambling parts in here too.
this was better than jane eyre !!!!!!!!!! what !!!!!!!!!!!
I found this to be a very bleak, beautifully written book. It is almost impossible not to compare it to Jane Eyre, but more interesting to think about the ways the differences between the two stories (published about 6 years apart) reflect the changes in the author herself. Similar themes exist: loneliness, limited choices available to women, the oppressiveness of religious institutions (Bronte really lets loose on the Catholic Church in this one, which was fascinating). Yet Lucy's story feels far more hopeless, and I wonder whether this is related to the loss and hardship Bronte faced in those years.
I think Lucy Snowe is a harder narrator to connect to as a modern reader, the repression she employs as a defense mechanism is very different from the ways Jane actively seeks connection and builds relationships (this is reflected in the ways each of these first person narrators engage directly with the reader, Jane feels deeply in command of her own story, where Lucy often feels like a bystander). I did love the narrative intricacies of this novel, such as Lucy not telling us when she recognized Graham! I do enjoy an unreliable narrator. I found Lucy's quiet loneliness very painful and deeply compelling--Bronte captures how trapped she feels in her circumstances and solitude with heartbreaking detail. I enjoyed the moments where Lucy was able to express and assert herself, this was the one aspect of her relationship with Monsieur Paul I could get behind: he was the only person she felt she could be her authentic self with.
But boy was he hard to like in every other respect! I have yet to meet an unproblematic man in any novel by the Bronte sisters, which feels quite intentional. It also didn't help that the actor playing Paul on the audiobook was rather difficult to understand, but I simply found his moralizing, his constant criticism, his manipulation, his invasions of privacy so insufferable that by the time we got to his tragic backstory I was completely unmoved. I cannot call Rochester a good man, and Heathcliff even less so, but there is something larger than life and engaging about them (and their love for Jane and Catherine) that I just did not find in M. Paul. And yet I wanted an end to Lucy's loneliness, and so was perplexed by, but not entirely against their engagement--I wonder if this is the point, Lucy herself chooses to love him to end her loneliness than because of his character. Which causes me to wonder how closely this mirrors the marriage of Charlotte Bronte herself.
In any case, I found the ending baffling, infuriating, and brilliant--deeply fitting for this story.
I think Lucy Snowe is a harder narrator to connect to as a modern reader, the repression she employs as a defense mechanism is very different from the ways Jane actively seeks connection and builds relationships (this is reflected in the ways each of these first person narrators engage directly with the reader, Jane feels deeply in command of her own story, where Lucy often feels like a bystander). I did love the narrative intricacies of this novel, such as Lucy not telling us when she recognized Graham! I do enjoy an unreliable narrator. I found Lucy's quiet loneliness very painful and deeply compelling--Bronte captures how trapped she feels in her circumstances and solitude with heartbreaking detail. I enjoyed the moments where Lucy was able to express and assert herself, this was the one aspect of her relationship with Monsieur Paul I could get behind: he was the only person she felt she could be her authentic self with.
But boy was he hard to like in every other respect! I have yet to meet an unproblematic man in any novel by the Bronte sisters, which feels quite intentional. It also didn't help that the actor playing Paul on the audiobook was rather difficult to understand, but I simply found his moralizing, his constant criticism, his manipulation, his invasions of privacy so insufferable that by the time we got to his tragic backstory I was completely unmoved. I cannot call Rochester a good man, and Heathcliff even less so, but there is something larger than life and engaging about them (and their love for Jane and Catherine) that I just did not find in M. Paul. And yet I wanted an end to Lucy's loneliness, and so was perplexed by, but not entirely against their engagement--I wonder if this is the point, Lucy herself chooses to love him to end her loneliness than because of his character. Which causes me to wonder how closely this mirrors the marriage of Charlotte Bronte herself.
In any case, I found the ending baffling, infuriating, and brilliant--deeply fitting for this story.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I listened to this entire book (about 20 hours, exceptional narrator) so I think reading it, with French translations, would have been helpful. But, there's a lot of words in this book and not much action so it was easy to listen to and do a bit of daydreaming.
I just read the synopsis to make sure I was on track for the plot and I was (yay!). The characters confused me but that's o.k. - you still got the idea.
I was happy it did not end in a wedding as most 19th century novels. Lucy Snowe is awesome and I loved her candor and snark. I think my favorite dig was "he looked like a pile of eyes on a rich masterpiece" :D While the ending was a bit ambiguous, I choose to believe Lucy lived the remainder of her life as the mistress of the school, free to be herself without the shackles of a man :P
I think Charlotte Bronte is my favorite 19th century author. Wikipedia says that Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a biography/did research on Charlotte?? I love Gaskell as well so it warms my heart to know that Gaskell was also enamored of Charlotte.
I just read the synopsis to make sure I was on track for the plot and I was (yay!). The characters confused me but that's o.k. - you still got the idea.
I was happy it did not end in a wedding as most 19th century novels. Lucy Snowe is awesome and I loved her candor and snark. I think my favorite dig was "he looked like a pile of eyes on a rich masterpiece" :D While the ending was a bit ambiguous, I choose to believe Lucy lived the remainder of her life as the mistress of the school, free to be herself without the shackles of a man :P
I think Charlotte Bronte is my favorite 19th century author. Wikipedia says that Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a biography/did research on Charlotte?? I love Gaskell as well so it warms my heart to know that Gaskell was also enamored of Charlotte.
I clearly am not as smart as everyone who gives this book the highest praise and calls it a masterpiece because reader I hated it. I can't think of a single character who had a pleasurable personality to read about and every interaction between every person was uncomfortable to experience even from a distance. I've read and loved a lot of classics but this one just was not for me in the slightest. Even the romance portion was depressing. I chose to read this on audio (20 hrs in case you were wondering) and all of the French phrases that often had huge impacts on the story were not translated with any context leading me confused more often than not. It turns out my physical copy had translations at the end of the book making me think maybe that would have been the better choice but I truly don't think I could have finished this without a constant (if terrible) narrorator reading it to me.
Dovevano essere tre stelle ma il finale ha dato la mazzata finale a quel poco di voglia di apprezzare questo libro che mi era rimasta
4.5/5
Everything that I loved about Jane Eyre is even better in Villette, and everything I didn't like is worse. Lots of Gothic scene setting and beautiful long emotional passages and internal conversations such as a heated argument with "Reason", but also quite a lot of Protestant stuff (made more extreme by the anti-Catholic overtone of this book), and I agree here with A.S. Byatt in the introduction to my edition, who says, 'sometimes you get the very high-flown passages at that point, which strike one as false because you feel she's working herself up' (p.liv). It started very well, then became a bit dull and slow, but then really satisfyingly picked up towards the end. Definitely worth pulling through.
Probably my favourite aspect of Villette was the dodgy narration. Lucy Snowe can definitely be described as an unreliable narrator, and she strikes an unsettling balance between latching onto her reader and referring to us directly (even more so than in Jane Eyre, perhaps due to her more established readership by the 1850s?) but also not trusting us and manipulatively withholding information. This on the one hand makes for dramatic twists, but then there is something uncomfortable and terrible about the twists as you feel you can't know anything. Particularly about Lucy herself! Her character is like a cold blank slate (hence the name I presume) and full of so much emotion and yet we never properly meet her; all the characters surrounding her are more developed than she is. She seems to know things and have hindsight – at only one point, quite early on, does Lucy imply in parenthesis that she is very elderly as she narrates the story: '(for I speak of a time gone by: my hair which till a late period withstood the frosts of time, lies now, at last white, under a cap, like snow beneath snow)' and somehow her aged self is even more blank and "Snowe"-like than her younger self participating in the story.
There was a very interesting cross-dressing scene where Lucy refuses to fully dress as a man and maintains her skirt underneath – she says to the reader, 'To be dressed like a man did not please, and would not suit me [...] No. I would keep my own dress; come what might. M. Paul might storm, might rage: I would keep my own dress.' (pp.158-9) – which is complicated and could either suggest she is strong in claiming her feminine identity, or maybe that she is threatened by the idea of embodying a masculine role. And THEN in the fiction of the play she woos Ginevra (and in real life they have quite an intense intimate relationship, maybe even erotic from Ginevra's side)! So this scene has lots of juicy queer possibilities in it.
Villette was the perfect book to read on a winter holiday; it is simultaneously stormy and bitter and cold and warm and cosy and emotionally compelling. There is an incredible middle section of Lucy's depression –'The mid-blank is always a beclouded point for the solitary: [the hermit's] nerves ache with the strain of long expectancy; the doubts hitherto repelled gather now to a mass and – strong in accumulation – roll back upon him with a force which savours of vindictiveness.' (p.309) – which is then expanded to reach a vast natural landscape: so powerful and modern in the way mental health is conceptualised. Beyond this depressive passage, there is a tension throughout the whole novel of Lucy being trapped with herself and her thoughts, 'a suffocating burial in her own non-existence' (The Madwoman in the Attic p.416) which was very well done.
I really wanted to be invested in the romance[s] but just did not fid myself caring that much. However this is not primarily about romance, the scope is much wider, and in this aspect it is better than Jane Eyre. Without spoiling anything, the ending is much more satisfying to me, as it is less neatly wrapped up. In fact, I had to read it a few times to figure out what was really going on. Also, I think this has more nuances: in the introduction, Sodre proposes 'there isn't a separate character who is the "mad woman in the attic": the madness is not split off from the central character, like in Jane Eyre [...] Part of the greatness of Villette comes from the integration of madness and sanity in the same character.' (p.lv) Although Lucy Snowe doesn't really exist as we are never fully let in to meet her, somehow we get so invested in that complicated angsty inner conflict and cool aloofness.
Sadly I think this might have been Charlotte's peak and there isn't much more of hers I want to read at the moment. Highly recommend Villette, especially if you liked Jane Eyre but wished it were more radical.
Everything that I loved about Jane Eyre is even better in Villette, and everything I didn't like is worse. Lots of Gothic scene setting and beautiful long emotional passages and internal conversations such as a heated argument with "Reason", but also quite a lot of Protestant stuff (made more extreme by the anti-Catholic overtone of this book), and I agree here with A.S. Byatt in the introduction to my edition, who says, 'sometimes you get the very high-flown passages at that point, which strike one as false because you feel she's working herself up' (p.liv). It started very well, then became a bit dull and slow, but then really satisfyingly picked up towards the end. Definitely worth pulling through.
Probably my favourite aspect of Villette was the dodgy narration. Lucy Snowe can definitely be described as an unreliable narrator, and she strikes an unsettling balance between latching onto her reader and referring to us directly (even more so than in Jane Eyre, perhaps due to her more established readership by the 1850s?) but also not trusting us and manipulatively withholding information. This on the one hand makes for dramatic twists, but then there is something uncomfortable and terrible about the twists as you feel you can't know anything. Particularly about Lucy herself! Her character is like a cold blank slate (hence the name I presume) and full of so much emotion and yet we never properly meet her; all the characters surrounding her are more developed than she is. She seems to know things and have hindsight – at only one point, quite early on, does Lucy imply in parenthesis that she is very elderly as she narrates the story: '(for I speak of a time gone by: my hair which till a late period withstood the frosts of time, lies now, at last white, under a cap, like snow beneath snow)' and somehow her aged self is even more blank and "Snowe"-like than her younger self participating in the story.
There was a very interesting cross-dressing scene where Lucy refuses to fully dress as a man and maintains her skirt underneath – she says to the reader, 'To be dressed like a man did not please, and would not suit me [...] No. I would keep my own dress; come what might. M. Paul might storm, might rage: I would keep my own dress.' (pp.158-9) – which is complicated and could either suggest she is strong in claiming her feminine identity, or maybe that she is threatened by the idea of embodying a masculine role. And THEN in the fiction of the play she woos Ginevra (and in real life they have quite an intense intimate relationship, maybe even erotic from Ginevra's side)! So this scene has lots of juicy queer possibilities in it.
Villette was the perfect book to read on a winter holiday; it is simultaneously stormy and bitter and cold and warm and cosy and emotionally compelling. There is an incredible middle section of Lucy's depression –'The mid-blank is always a beclouded point for the solitary: [the hermit's] nerves ache with the strain of long expectancy; the doubts hitherto repelled gather now to a mass and – strong in accumulation – roll back upon him with a force which savours of vindictiveness.' (p.309) – which is then expanded to reach a vast natural landscape: so powerful and modern in the way mental health is conceptualised. Beyond this depressive passage, there is a tension throughout the whole novel of Lucy being trapped with herself and her thoughts, 'a suffocating burial in her own non-existence' (The Madwoman in the Attic p.416) which was very well done.
I really wanted to be invested in the romance[s] but just did not fid myself caring that much. However this is not primarily about romance, the scope is much wider, and in this aspect it is better than Jane Eyre. Without spoiling anything, the ending is much more satisfying to me, as it is less neatly wrapped up. In fact, I had to read it a few times to figure out what was really going on. Also, I think this has more nuances: in the introduction, Sodre proposes 'there isn't a separate character who is the "mad woman in the attic": the madness is not split off from the central character, like in Jane Eyre [...] Part of the greatness of Villette comes from the integration of madness and sanity in the same character.' (p.lv) Although Lucy Snowe doesn't really exist as we are never fully let in to meet her, somehow we get so invested in that complicated angsty inner conflict and cool aloofness.
Sadly I think this might have been Charlotte's peak and there isn't much more of hers I want to read at the moment. Highly recommend Villette, especially if you liked Jane Eyre but wished it were more radical.
I finished this book last week, but it's taken me a while to figure out how to rate it. In many ways, it is "amazing," but I'm not sure I loved it--at least not the whole of it. I think it would have helped if I were better at reading French, or if my edition had footnotes on the bottom of the page instead of at the end of the volume, since some of my frustration was just from flipping back and forth so damn much (my problem, I admit, not Bronte's). I also think that because the scope of the novel was so small--Lucy Snowe knows so few people and is so geographically confined--the side plots following people like Dr. Bretton and Ginevra Fanshawe sometimes became a bit tedious. I was also frustrated by how difficult it was to "get" Lucy, who could sometimes be incredibly sympathetic (especially to a fellow introvert) and sometimes just plain thorny. I'm pretty sure that enigma was purposeful on Bronte's part, though, so my frustration is a sign of the book's success.
My favorite parts of the book were the multiple dream-like sequences and gothic scenes in which a supernatural world touched reality seamlessly. These moments are so rich and so emotionally full that they are just a delight to read. Also, without giving anything away, the penultimate chapter is absolutely amazing. Getting there is worth it, I promise.
My favorite parts of the book were the multiple dream-like sequences and gothic scenes in which a supernatural world touched reality seamlessly. These moments are so rich and so emotionally full that they are just a delight to read. Also, without giving anything away, the penultimate chapter is absolutely amazing. Getting there is worth it, I promise.