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Villette

Charlotte Brontë

Start date: March 1, 2016

Finish date: April 11, 2016

Discussion: Brontë Sisters Collection

Why we're reading this: Group Read 03/01/16 - 04/11/16

[close] Group Read 03/01/16 - 04/11/16

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What Members Thought

Dec 03, 2011 Kim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

For a very long time I've thought that the only Bronte novel I would ever really like is Jane Eyre. I am very pleased to have put that idea to the challenge and proven myself wrong.

Villette is not an easy novel. To start with, like so many Victorian novels it is dense and slow moving, particularly in the middle section. The plot could be summed up in a single paragraph and no opportunity is lost to take a page to say what could be said in a single sentence. The narrative is heavily reliant on c
For a very long time I've thought that the only Bronte novel I would ever really like is Jane Eyre. I am very pleased to have put that idea to the challenge and proven myself wrong.

Villette is not an easy novel. To start with, like so many Victorian novels it is dense and slow moving, particularly in the middle section. The plot could be summed up in a single paragraph and no opportunity is lost to take a page to say what could be said in a single sentence. The narrative is heavily reliant on coincidence and is replete with anti-Roman Catholic and (to a lesser extent) anti-European sentiment. These are factors which can sorely test the patience of the contemporary reader.

As with Jane Eyre, Villette is a first person narrative in the form of a memoir. The heroine, Lucy Snowe, makes it clear that she is reflecting on events long past. Like her literary sister Jane Eyre, Lucy is poor and has to earn her own living. Again like Jane, Lucy is intelligent, self-contained and principled, with a passionate nature just below the surface. However, notwithstanding some similarities between the characters, Lucy is very different from Jane and her character is in part what makes the novel more difficult than Jane Eyre, but ultimately very rewarding.

Jane Eyre confides in her readers. As a narrator, she holds nothing back of what she is thinking and what she is feeling. She draws readers into her world, trusting that they will understand her and empathise with her. Lucy Snowe, on the other hand, keeps things back. She does not reveal everything she knows. Some of those things readers find out in due course. Other things remain hidden. Lucy's reticence can be frustrating, but it is part of her psychological profile. And at it's deepest level, this is what the novel is all about. Bronte does a superb job of revealing much more about Lucy's mind than Lucy appears to reveal as the narrator of her life story. Bronte's description of Lucy's depression, for example, is gut-wrenching. From being initially frustrated with Lucy, I was ultimately totally engaged by her. I ached for her in her despair, her depression and her loneliness. I desperately wanted her to find happiness. Her story continued to haunt me for day after I finished the book.

Villette said to be the most autobiographical of Charlotte Bronte's novels, with the town of Villette being based on Brussels, where Bronte taught, and the character of Paul Emmanuel being based on M Heger, the married teacher with whom Bronte fell in love. My knowledge of Bronte's life is sketchy, but this novel makes me want to understand her better. It also makes me want to read her other works, which is not something I ever thought I would want to do.

This is not a novel for a reader who wants something light and fluffy. It is not a novel for a reader who wants clean, spare prose or a fast-paced story. I'm glad that I listened to an audiobook - the Naxos edition narrated by the excellent Mandy Weston - as I suspect that my patience would have been tried by reading the text. Overall, it was a great experience. While I'm not totally persuaded that Villette is a better novel than Jame Eyre, it is nevertheless a very impressive work. ...more

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Mar 27, 2011 Caz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Not the easiest of reads. The heroine is quite unsympathetic to start with and I think it's difficult at first to understand her thoughts, reasonings and emotions with a modern-day mindset. That said though, once I really got into the book I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending is both heartbreaking and cautiously optimistic at once. ...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Amy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 2011-reads

I read Jane Eyre for my GCSE coursework; and, being totally honest, didn't enjoy it. It did have a compelling plot, what with the mad woman in the attic thing, but there was something about it that left me rather cold.
However, I own copies of Villette and Shirley, Charlotte Bronte's other novels, and hoped that by reading these that she would join her sisters Anne & Emily as one of my favourite authors. However, she hasn't quite made it.
Villette, like Jane Eyre, is a first person narrative, whic I read Jane Eyre for my GCSE coursework; and, being totally honest, didn't enjoy it. It did have a compelling plot, what with the mad woman in the attic thing, but there was something about it that left me rather cold.
However, I own copies of Villette and Shirley, Charlotte Bronte's other novels, and hoped that by reading these that she would join her sisters Anne & Emily as one of my favourite authors. However, she hasn't quite made it.
Villette, like Jane Eyre, is a first person narrative, which acknowledges the reader, and is from the perspective of Lucy Snowe. She is a young orphan who lives with the Bretton family, then works as a companion, before heading out to Europe, to a French-speak country, where she becomes a teacher at the Villette school for girls, run by Madame Beck.
The problem I had with Villette was pretty much the opposite to the one I had with Jane Eyre, the latter had a great plot but pretty annoying (in my opinion) characters, whereas this novel had vibrant supporting characters, but a plot that didn't really pick up until the last section. I liked the spoiled vapidness of Ginerva and the various natures of the different teachers at Villette; especially Monsieur Emmanuel with his fiery temper (view spoiler). Bronte's descriptions were also wonderful, really evoking the town and the characters-I even found myself smiling at some of them.
However, I was frustrated at the lack of plot pushing the tale forward; most of all, I was annoyed that Lucy was an observer, that we knew nothing much about her, and instead were told a lot about the other characters. This was a shame, as I liked Snowe's voice more than Eyre's, yet knew a lot less about her.
Villette is by no means a bad novel, it's supporting characters are interesting, and if the debate between Catholicism and Protestantism is something that interests you then there is a massive amount of discussion of that in the novel. However, it didn't help change my perception of Charlotte Bronte. I'm hoping that maybe Shirley will be third time lucky! ...more

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