Villette (Penguin Classics)

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And Lucy Snowe? Well—Lucy Snowe is Jane Eyre again, the friendless girl, fighting the world as best she may, her only weapon a strong and chainless will, her constant hindrances, the passionate nature that makes her the slave of sympathy, of the first kind look or word, and the wild poetic imagination that forbids her all reconciliation with her own lot, the lot of the unbeautiful and obscure.

Villette was Charlotte Brontë's third and last novel published during her life. It was preceded in writing by The Professor (her posthumously published first novel, of which Villette is a reworking, though still not very similar), Jane Eyre, and Shirley. At present those delicate and noble women who have entered there look a little strange to us. Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, Emily Brontë, Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore—it is as though they had wrested something that did not belong to them, by a kind of splendid violence. As a rule, so far, women have been poets in and through the novel-Cowper-like poets of the common life like Miss Austen, or Mrs. Gaskell, or Mrs. Oliphant; Lucretian or Virgilian observers of the many-colored web like George Eliot, or, in some phases, George Sand; romantic or lyrical artists like George Sand again, or like Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Here no one questions their citizenship; no one is astonished by the place they hold; they are here among the recognized “masters of those who know.” 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]

Timeless works by Charlotte Brontë

Torgerson, Beth. 2005. Reading the Brontë body: Disease, desire, and the constraints of culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Brontë's friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell, while not particularly close, was significant in that Gaskell wrote the first biography of Brontë after her death in 1855. The rival lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet, bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting.”

It is as poets then, in the larger sense, and as poets of passion, properly so-called—that is, of exalted and transfiguring feeling—that writers like George Meredith, and George Sand, and Charlotte Brontë affect the world, and live in its memory. Never was Charlotte Brontë better served by this great gift of poetic vision than in Villette—never indeed so well. The style of the book throughout has felt the kindling and transforming influence.

Charlotte’s letter to her publisher 

From beginning to end it seems to be written in flame; one can only return to the metaphor, for there is no other that renders the main, the predominant impression. The story is, as it were, upborne by something lambent and rushing. I did wonder, how much of this is true of us? Don’t we change our demeanor and personalities based on those we are interacting with; aren’t we different around different people? If that is the case, then when are we truly ourselves? Is it with those we are only the closest to or are our true selves an amalgamation of the various parts we present to others? A struggle to balance reason and passion 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.

I do not like the love,”—she says—“either the kind or the degree of it,” —and she maintains that “its prevalence in the book, and effect on the action of it,” go some way to explain and even to justify the charge of ‘coarseness’ which had been brought against the writer’s treatment of love in Jane Eyre. 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 imagination is at least the fruit of the experience; for the poet weaves with all that comes to his hand. But there are degrees of delicacy and nobility in the weaving. Edmond de Goncourt noted, as an artist—for the public—every detail of his brother’s death, and his own sensations. Charlotte conceived the sacred things of kinship more finely. Brontë was of slight build and was less than five feet tall. [19] Brussels and Haworth [ edit ] Plaque in Brussels, on the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels

More about Villette by Charlotte Brontë

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. The metaphors of storms and shadows occur over and over throughout the narrative, reflecting Lucy’s inner world as it describes the outer setting. The stormy nights are the ones in which new discoveries are made, new secrets come to light, and when she must internally struggle with herself and her life’s path. The Professor, the first novel Brontë had written, was published posthumously in 1857. The fragment of a new novel she had been writing in her last years has been twice completed by recent authors, the more famous version being Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Brontë by Clare Boylan in 2003. Most of her writings about the imaginary country Angria have also been published since her death. In 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary for her. [51] Religion [ edit ] She was enrolled at the Clergy Daughters' School but returned home the next year following the deaths of two of her sisters. She began studying at the school at Roe Head but left after a year to teach her sisters at home. Other jobs Did she really understand so little of what she had done? For of all criticisms that can be applied to it, none has so little relation to Villette as a criticism that goes by negatives. It is the most assertive, the most challenging of books.