Villette (Penguin Classics)

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This visit contributed much to the growing book. In the first place the character of Graham Bretton—“Dr. John”—owed many characteristic features and details to Miss Brontë’s impressions, now renewed and completed, of her kind host and publisher, Mr. George Smith.

But not seldom the qualities which give a book immortality are the qualities that for a time guard it from the crowd—till its bloom of fame has grown to a safe maturity, beyond injury or doubt. Lyndall Gordon stated that Charlotte’s novels all represent Charlotte’s struggle to balance Reason and Passion, while not becoming overcome by either. After reading that, I saw how true it was in Jane Eyre and I watched for it in Villette. Sure enough, it was there. Charlotte Brontë's Unpublished Works Discovered". Newsweek. 13 November 2015 . Retrieved 13 June 2021. John Graham Bretton: A young physician and the son of Lucy's godmother. Also known as Dr. John, John Graham Bretton is a kindhearted man who lives in Villette. Lucy knew him in her youth and then falls in love with him ten years later when their paths cross once again. Dr. John instead gives his affections first to Ginevra Fanshawe and later to Polly Home, the latter of whom he eventually marries. Both Polly and Graham, from their childhood states, go through transformations not only in temperament and condition but also in the names they are called. Little Polly Home becomes transformed, by becoming an heiress, into Paulina Home de Bassompierre. From being a tiny motherless English waif, she is elevated to become a beautiful heiress of a Continental aristocratic family.

Like her sisters, taken from life in its prime

Villette is a reworking of material from Charlotte's first novel, The Professor (then still unpublished), and depicts, thinly-disguised, her passion for M Heger, her Brussels school master, and her attraction to George Smith, her young publisher. Many elements echo Jane Eyre: both have orphans as heroines, plain women who have to find their way through an alien world. Lucy Snowe (in drafts for the book, Charlotte alternated between Snow[e] and Frost, showing the importance of the name as representing coldness) is an outsider; in appearance a self-composed observer, in reality a mass of emotions which she can only control by suppression. Sometimes she confides in the reader; often, even we must guess at what is in her mind. By contrast, M Emanuel is fiery and choleric, but internally is cool until Lucy's coldness warms him.

Tenderness, faith, treason, loneliness, parting, yearning, the fusion of heart with heart and soul with soul, the ineffable illumination that love can give to common things and humble lives,—these, after all, are the perennially interesting things in life; and here the women-novelists are at no disadvantage.Villette,” says Mrs. Gaskell, “was received with one burst of acclamation.” There was no question then among “the judicious,” and there can be still less question now, that it is the writer’s masterpiece. It has never been so widely read as Jane Eyre; and probably the majority of English readers prefer Shirley. In 1848 Brontë began work on the manuscript of her second novel, Shirley. It was only partially completed when the Brontë family suffered the deaths of three of its members within eight months. In September 1848 Branwell died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus, exacerbated by heavy drinking, although Brontë believed that his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell may have had a laudanum addiction. Emily became seriously ill shortly after his funeral and died of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848. Anne died of the same disease in May 1849. Brontë was unable to write at this time. The 1944 Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine Jane Eyre ("A love story every woman would die a thousand deaths to live!") is a classic; Zeffirelli's 1996 version, with William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg, takes perhaps too much artistic licence for the Brontë-lover. Recommended biography

Dr. John and Polly fall in love. They exchange letters, hoping to become engaged. M. de Bassompierre is against letting his daughter go, but he eventually relents. The couple marry and are happy, having many healthy children. Ginevra, formerly loved by Dr. John, is now jealous and dislikes her cousin Polly. It also conveys the duress experienced by Charlotte, and the difficulties she had in writing Villettewhile grieving the deaths of her beloved sisters, Emilyand Anne. In Lucy, I think Charlotte is trying to demonstrate to herself, as well as to her readers, the danger of letting logic and reason possess you fully; perhaps this was also Charlotte’s way of reminding herself that it is necessary to let passion and desire in, despite the fears. Miller, Elaine (1989). Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840-1985 (1sted.). London: The Women's Press. p.29-45. ISBN 0-7043-4175-1.Shorter, Clement King (19 September 2013). The Brontës Life and Letters: Being an Attempt to Present a Full and Final Record of the Lives of the Three Sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108065238 . Retrieved 2 February 2019– via Google Books.

On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin Héger after leaving Brussels in 1844. [61] Written in French except for one postscript in English, the letters broke the prevailing image of Brontë as an angelic martyr to Christian and female duties that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell. [61] The letters, which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Héger frequently appears not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, although they are complex and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an example of literary self-dramatisation and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil. [61] Villette itself, in portions that are clearly autobiographical, bears curious testimony to the French reading, which stirred and liberated Charlotte’s genius, as Hofmann’s tales gave spur and impetus to Emily. It was a fortunate chance that thus brought to bear upon her at a critical moment a force so strong and kindred, a force starting from a Celt like herself, from the Breton Chateaubriand. The modern mind craves for knowledge, and the modern novel reflects the craving—which after all it can never satisfy. But the craving for feeling is at least as strong, and above all for that feeling which expresses the heart’s defiance of the facts which crush it, which dives, as Renan says, into the innermost recesses of man, and brings up, or seems to bring up, the secrets of the infinite. And it is perhaps in the union of this self-governing English piety, submissive, practical, a little stern, with her astonishing range and daring as an artist, that one of Charlotte Brontë’s chief spells over the English mind may be said to lie.

Charlotte Brontë Quotes

Those veiled and agonized passages of Shirley are all that she will tell the world of woes that are not wholly her own. But of her personal suffering, physical and mental, she is mistress, and she has turned it to poignant and lasting profit in the misery of Lucy Snowe. If I could always live with you, and daily read the bible with you, if your lips and mine could at the same time, drink the same draught from the same pure fountain of Mercy – I hope, I trust, I might one day become better, far better, than my evil wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit, and warm to the flesh will now permit me to be. [52] The Life of Charlotte Brontë [ edit ] Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Brontë Parsonage Museum Nathan-Kazis, Josh (25 April 2022). "Brontë Manuscript Buyer Will Donate Book To Museum". Barron's . Retrieved 27 April 2022. The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.”