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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
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.
Villette sweetie I'm so sorry I didn't appreciate you as a teen you are not boring at all, I adore you. Charlotte Bronte will never be my favourite Bronte because her taste in men is frankly a disaster, but damn "happiness is not a potato"??? My favourite fucking line. And Lucy Snowe!!! Narrates this whole thing and TELLS YOU ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, the audacity of this girl!!!
And re: Schrödinger's shipwreck and the famed unhappy ending, girl that was the best possible outcome let's be honest, and in this regard makes Villette way better than Jane Eyre. Anyway I love you Charlotte for your dedication to depressing realism and also to ghost nuns and dramatic fires and creepy attics, and Lucy Snowe if you knew more than two unmarried men in the world I promise you could have done better.
And re: Schrödinger's shipwreck and the famed unhappy ending, girl that was the best possible outcome let's be honest, and in this regard makes Villette way better than Jane Eyre. Anyway I love you Charlotte for your dedication to depressing realism and also to ghost nuns and dramatic fires and creepy attics, and Lucy Snowe if you knew more than two unmarried men in the world I promise you could have done better.
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Intriquitly written (as are most books in this time), specifically the language and unique vocabulary. Introduction stated that Bronte loosely based this on events similarly experienced in her own life. The main character is so naive, it is frustrating at times and I hope that Bronte didn't see herself as that blind. Some of the conversations between characters are in French (not translated to English), which makes it a bit hard to follow. And the ending (not to mention any specifics) was extremely disappointing.
slow-paced
“His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss.”
I found Villette a struggle. It is character- rather than plot-driven, but I had difficulty with the ways many of the characters were drawn. Some, even when interesting, were too clearly representative types, such as Purity or Vanity, to have any depth. Others underwent change that was confusing because of how they'd been initially cast; I felt this way about Paul Emmanuel, who could never in my mind cease to be the Napoleonic clown he was convincingly described as in his introduction, and this threw off my reading of the entire second half or so of the novel.
Lucy Snowe was a frustrating narrator, sometimes too much an observer than participant but not in a way that drew me closer to the objects of her focus; sometimes unreliable but not (to me) in an interesting way; and I was shocked to read (after finishing the book) that she is considered to be highly erotic - I'd have said Jane Eyre eclipses her a hundredfold.
I'm glad I read this on my smartphone, because there's French on nearly every page.
Lucy Snowe was a frustrating narrator, sometimes too much an observer than participant but not in a way that drew me closer to the objects of her focus; sometimes unreliable but not (to me) in an interesting way; and I was shocked to read (after finishing the book) that she is considered to be highly erotic - I'd have said Jane Eyre eclipses her a hundredfold.
I'm glad I read this on my smartphone, because there's French on nearly every page.
Villette is difficult to rate. The narrator, Lucy, keeps the reader at a distance. She does not care if one can sympathise with her and doesn't ask for it. Lucy does not want to share her story which sometimes made it difficult for me to feel intrigued by her story.
It is rather a quiet and psychological story than one full of action. Lucy's story realistically depicts the life of women and broke my heart a bit at the end.
It is rather a quiet and psychological story than one full of action. Lucy's story realistically depicts the life of women and broke my heart a bit at the end.
Wow. Just - wow. Jane will always be my favorite, but this really was amazing. I'll have to take some time to digest before I write more.