Villette (novel)

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name = Villette
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author = Charlotte Brontë
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country = United Kingdom
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release_date = 1853
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"Villette" is a novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1853. After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance. The novel is celebrated not so much for its plot as its acute tracing of Lucy’s psychology, particularly Brontë’s use of Gothic doubling to represent externally what her protagonist is suffering internally.

Biographical background

In 1842 Brontë traveled to Brussels, Belgium with her sister Emily, where they enrolled in a "pensionnat" (boarding school) run by M. and Mme. Constantin Héger. In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the "pensionnat" was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt who had joined the family after the death of their mother to look after the children, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the "pensionnat". Her second stay at the "pensionnat" was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick, and fell in love with M. Héger. She finally returned to her family’s rectory at Haworth in January 1844.

Brontë drew on this source material for her first, unsuccessful novel "The Professor". After several publishers rejected this early work, Brontë reworked the material as a basis for "Villette". In particular, most literary historians believe the character of M. Paul Emanuel to be closely based on M. Héger. Furthermore, the character of Graham Bretton is widely acknowledged to have been modelled on Brontë's publisher, George Murray Smith, who was at one time a potential suitor.

Plot summary

"Villette" begins with its famously passive and secretive protagonist, Lucy Snowe, age 10, observing her godmother, Mrs. Bretton, her son, Graham Bretton, and a young visitor, Paulina Home, known to everyone as "Polly." The child is a peculiar little thing and soon develops a deep devotion for the older Graham, who showers her with attention until her stay is cut short when her father comes to take her away. In the ensuing years, an unspecified family tragedy forces Lucy into action, causing her to seek employment, and at age 23 she boards a ship for "Labassecour" (French for 'farmyard' and based on Belgium) despite not speaking a word of French on a hope that maybe she may find something in a new place. After arriving in the capital city of Villette, Lucy finds work as a teacher at Mme. Beck's boarding school for girls (which can be seen as a literary representation of the Hégers' Brussels "pensionnat"), and thrives despite Mme. Beck's constant surveillance of the students and staff.

Dr. John, a handsome English doctor, frequently visits the school because of his love for the heartless coquette Ginevra. In one of "Villette"’s infamous plot twists, Dr. John is later revealed to be Graham Bretton, a fact that Lucy has known but deliberately concealed from the reader. After Dr. John discovers Ginevra's unworthiness, his brotherly instincts turn his attention to Lucy, and they become close friends which she values very highly despite her usual emotional reserve. We meet "Polly" again at this point (although her father has come into the title de Bassompierre which makes her now Paulina Home de Bassompierre) when Dr. Bretton saves her from being trodden upon at the theater one night. They soon discover that they know each other and renew their friendship, which quickly blossoms into something more. The two fall in love and eventually marry, which Lucy has long seen coming, and she understands without sharing their facile happiness.

At the same time, Lucy has the first of several encounters with a shadowy nun in the attic who may be the ghost of a nun buried alive on the grounds for breaking her vows of chastity; in a highly symbolic scene, she finally finds the nun's habit in her bed and destroys it. She later discovers it to be the disguise of Ginevra's amour, de Hamal.

Lucy finds herself becoming closer to a colleague, the autocratic, fiery schoolmaster M. Paul Emanuel; the two eventually fall in love. However, a group of conspiring antagonists, including Mme. Beck, the priest Père Silas, and the relatives of M. Paul's long-dead fiancée, struggle to keep the two apart, and finally succeed in forcing M. Paul's departure for the West Indies to oversee his plantation there. He nonetheless declares his love for Lucy before his departure, and arranges for her to live independently as the headmistress of her own day school or "externat", which she later expands into a "pensionnat". "Villette"’s final pages are ambiguous; though Lucy says that she wants to leave the reader free to imagine a happy ending, she hints strongly that M. Paul's ship was destroyed by a storm on his return from the West Indies, killing him. She claims, for example, that "the three happiest years of [her] life" were those "before" M. Paul's return journey, which would suggest that he did indeed fall victim to the "destroying angel of tempest". Brontë described the ambiguity in the ending as a "little puzzle".

Themes

"Villette" is most commonly celebrated for its explorations of gender roles and repression. In "The Madwoman in the Attic", critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have argued that the character of Lucy Snowe is based in part on William Wordsworth's Lucy poems, emphasizing this idea of a feminine re-writing. In addition, critics have explored the issues of Lucy's psychological state in terms of the patriarchal constructs that form her cultural context. [http://library2.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-07062007-105527/]

"Villette" also incisively explores isolation and cross-cultural conflict in Lucy’s attempts to master the French language, as well as the conflicts between her English Protestantism and the Catholicism (her denunciation of which is unsparing: 'God is not with Rome') of Labassecour.

Adaptations

In 1970, the BBC produced a television miniseries based on "Villette", directed by Moira Armstrong and written by Lennox Phillips. It starred Judy Parfitt as Lucy Snowe, Bryan Marshall as Dr Graham Bretton, Peter Jeffrey as Paul Emmanuel, and Mona Bruce as Mme Beck. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421479/ Villette at the IMDb] ]

In 1999, the novel was also adapted as a 3-hour radio serial for BBC Radio 4, [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/255771.stm Actors fear for future of radio drama] , BBC News (15 January 1999)] broadcast in February 1999 with Catherine McCormack as Lucy Snowe, Joseph Fiennes as Dr Graham Bretton, Harriet Walter as Mme Beck, James Laurenson as Paul Emmanuel, and Keira Knightley as Polly. It was directed by Catherine Bailey and written by James Friel. "Villette" went on to win a Sony Award. [ [http://bronteana.wordpress.com/2006/02/03/113900501322680151/ Villette on BBC7] (3 February 2006)]

References

External links

* [http://publicliterature.org/books/villette/xaa.php "Villette"] at [http://publicliterature.org PublicLiterature.org]
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* [http://www.asiaing.com/villette-by-charlotte-bront.html "Villette" by Charlotte Brontë] Free eBook in PDF version.
* [http://librivox.org/villette-by-charlotte-bronte Librivox Audiobook Recording of the Villette]
* [http://site.girlebooks.com/xs.php?page=ebooks_detail&siteid=223&lang=en&table=user_girlebooks&idx=0&iddetail=279 "Villette" free downloads in PDF, PDB and LIT formats]