Product Description

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, an initially suspicious headmaster 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 governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë'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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120705 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

About the Author
Charlotte Brontë (1816-55), along with her sisters Anne and Emily, is among the greatest 19th century English novelists and author of Jane Eyre. Helen M. Cooper is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is also the author of a number of books and articles.

Customer Reviews

SUPERB - prepare to be enthralled!
On the back of the book it says this:-
Based on Charlotte bronte's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, Villette, is a moving tale of repressed feelings and subjection to cruel circumstance and position, borne with heroic fortitude. Rising above the frustrations of confinement within a rigid social order, it is also a story of a woman's right to love and be loved.

I note from some reviews that many people missed the point of this wonderful book. It is a beautifully written, poignant story. It is not supposed to be a fast-paced, modernised tale, but a beautifully written, richly embroidered account of the young life of a woman alone in the world seeking peace and independence. In a society where women did not normally go out alone and where rank and wealth were important, our heroine struggled with life. Charlotte Bronte graphically describes the heroine whose strength of character and kind, long-suffering personality earns rewards in the end. I did not feel the ending was uncertain or lacked meaning, but had I felt unsure of it, I would still define this book as one of the great reads of my life. I found it a privilege to read about characters who lived in an age long forgotten, and brought to life so colourfully, as told from one who lived it.

A far more mature work than Jane Eyre
Villette has always suffered in comparison with Jane Eyre, and it's certainly a less romantic read - but all the better for that. Where Jane Eyre exists as a female fantasy, Villette gets to grips with the uncomfortable real world, where men don't miraculously fall in love with plain, earnest, clever girls and instead prefer the beautiful and dumb! From the painful depiction of unrequited love, to the ambiguous and open-to-interpretation ending, this is a more mature, assured and challenging novel than any other that Charlotte Bronte wrote.

Heart's ease
I'm re-reading this novel and rediscovering all its delights and also its impressive structure. Now that I know the plot, I can appreciate the subtely with which it is woven, introducing hints that go under the radar upon first reading. Much like Alan Hollinghurst's 'Folding Star', this captures the awkwardness of foreign travel, seen through the lens of a protagonist arriving in Brussels (a much less glamorous location in the history of English literature than Paris or Rome). Lucy Snowe must make her way as a school teacher and observes life on the continent with a jaundiced eye. There are some longueurs but even these are interesting (musings on Catholicism, on the psychology of an oppressed mind, on cultural difference).

The main reason I treasure this novel is for the love story at its heart which has one of the most original and vivid male romantic interests I have ever encountered in literature.