Charlotte Brontë's Villette - Analysis of Chapters 1-13

Hi everyone, how are you today? Well, I have recently finished reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and after having completed that, I thought I would reread the rest of the Brontë novels, which I haven't read in a very long time. I may not reread all of them, but I knew I wanted to reread Villette, which I've not read since I was probably 13 or 14, so it left a huge impression on me at the time, but I have to admit I had forgotten a lot of details and just never got around to reading it again, even though I think at one point it had supplanted Jane Eyre among my favorite of Charlotte's novels. So what I'm going to be doing is going over the book in sections. There will be spoilers, because I'm going from cover to cover here, and having read the book before, there will be some end spoilers, I think. Well, I'll try not to get too much into that. We'll see how veiled I can make my language. What's this about? So this was, I believe, Brontë's last novel. It was based heavily on her experience of teaching in Brussels. So, you know, at some point she studied and taught at this girl's school in Brussels, and she ended up becoming very attached to one of the teachers there. I believe it was the husband of the woman who ran the school there, and he ended up becoming very influential in how Charlotte Brontë wrote a lot of her novels, starting with The Professor, but also Jane Eyre, and more obviously in Villette. So Villette is about another solitary female character. This is Lucy Snow, and she is as much orphaned, I would say, as Jane Eyre is. At the beginning of the novel, there's some hints and indications that she has family, biological family, but it's not really clear. And at the beginning of the novel, she ends up spending some time with her godmother. I think, though, that whereas in memory this book kind of distills down to the central romance that Lucy later finds herself in, what's really interesting about this book, and you can see I'm now about a fourth, almost a third of the way through, what's really interesting about the novel is the first, I guess, nearly 200 pages are about Lucy before she meets the love of her life. So this is Lucy's first years as a young woman and dealing with this incredible isolation that she finds herself in. And I guess the book is a little bit symmetrical that way, because much how it starts, it also ends. And that's something I didn't really pick up on the first time. There is so much foreshadowing in Villette, and if you're 13 years old and you're just zipping through the novel and maybe not paying that much attention to the structure or various, you know, very small little scenes that don't seem that important in the romance, then you miss all that foreshadowing. But really, there's so much in the first part to suggest where this novel goes. And in fact, you know, after she parts ways with her godmother, which, again, isn't fully explained, there's a little bit of reference to changing circumstances for Mrs. Breton. But, you know, it's all kind of vague, to be honest. And the first scenes with her godmother are very disconnected at this point from the rest of the book. But once she's on her own again, it just hits her how bad things are. And she meets this woman who is elderly and, you know, not doing well health-wise, and offers to take her in. And Lucy kind of hesitates for a bit because she doesn't want to become a caretaker at this point. She really wants to explore the world and is a bit afraid of being, you know, homebound all the time. And I think that that changes pretty quickly because once she develops some rapport with this old lady, she decides to give it a go. And, you know, she does become her companion and carer. But going back to the foreshadowing, there's a lot of references in this section to—well, I'll just read this bit here—because she's talking about these eight years after leaving her godmother's house. And she's telling the reader to picture her idle, basking, plump and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck as on the deck of a ship, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. And so she's saying, yeah, please, you know, we'll just skip over these eight years. I'm not going to tell you the details of where I'm from or what happened or, you know, what tragedy befell me. But then she says, I must somehow have fallen overboard or that there must have been a wreck at last. I too well remember a time, a long time, of cold, of danger, of contention. To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats the rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat and their icy pressure on my lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that not of one hour, nor one day. And she goes on with this metaphor of a shipwreck, and this becomes very important later in the book. But again, I didn't realize it until rereading the novel how important this is and what it means. And I think that, you know, some people have pointed out that Lucy Snow is an unreliable narrator. Now I have not really got to that part yet in this reread. I've not really noticed that. But what I do notice is her skillful omission and her desire as well to you know, she's not forthcoming. She just, you know, alludes to things in very veiled ways. And I think too, this kind of meshes with the format of this novel, which is not, you know, I think with Jane Eyre, if I remember correctly, I think Jane Eyre is written not too long after the ending of Jane Eyre, or like maybe, I could be wrong. It's been so long since I read it, but I got the sense that it wasn't written too long after the events. Whereas, you know, she says here, and this is chapter five, that she's writing this as a very elderly lady with white hair. So that's an interesting detail. She takes us about 100 pages to tell her, to tell us that this is when she's writing. But yeah, I just thought that was really interesting. And the way she reveals things to herself and to, I should say, to the reader and to other people is in this very gradual and you might even say reluctant way. So you know, she's a caretaker for a while. I should mention, I guess I didn't really talk about her experience at her godmother's, but there's this little girl she meets named Polly. And you know, it's kind of just a pretty uneventful domestic set of scenes. But she meets this character, Polly, who will come back later. That's why that really does matter. And then there's this lovely chapter six, where she goes to London after all her tragedies. And she's got really hardly anything to her name, but she goes to London and feels imbued with this new lease on life. And I thought that was such a lovely passage, because I don't know if that was based on Charlotte's own experiences, but my own experiences of London have been very positive thus far throughout the various times and years I've visited London. And I'm sure most of us can think of some big trip we took or event that we had when we were younger and which really kind of inspired us to take a chance. So she ends up taking a chance. She goes to Villette in this imaginary kingdom. I'll say imaginary, it's really Belgium under a different name. What is the name of this place, you may ask? La Bocassure? Something like that. Yeah, fictional place, but not so veiled reference to Belgium. And by various means, she ends up at this school for girls, where the headmistress lets her take care of her children at first, after very close scrutiny of Lucy's self and belongings. The headmistress goes through all her belongings. And you know, Lucy has nothing. She's desperate. So Lucy takes care of Madame Beck's children, because Madame Beck is a widow. And Lucy also starts to teach English on the side, because Madame Beck is... She's a pretty easy headmistress, but once she takes a disliking to someone or doesn't feel they're working up to her standards, she just fires them quickly and gets somebody new to take over. I think something that kind of went over my head the first time I read this was the interesting dynamic slash relationship between Lucy Snow and Madame Beck. Because as it's revealed later in the book, Madame Beck becomes the primary antagonist in the novel. And it kind of gives some troubling implications to Charlotte's relationship with the headmistress that she worked at, at the school she worked at, and who was married to the man Charlotte became enamored of. But that's for another story, another video. Nonetheless, you know, I really enjoyed how Charlotte Bronte wrote the character of Madame Beck, because she's not really likable, but she's very admirable. And I think Lucy emphasizes that. You know, Lucy only agrees to work for her because she feels Madame Beck is sensible, and that she has got her wits about her. She was a very great and a very capable woman. That school offered for her powers too limited a sphere. She ought to have swayed a nation. She should have been the leader of a turbulent legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her. None irritated her nerves, exhausted her patience, or overreached her astuteness. In her own single person, she could have compromised the duties of a first minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless, watchful and inscrutable, acute and insensate, with all perfectly decorous, decorous? Decorous. What more could be desired? So I really enjoy how, you know, there's Lucy, right? Lucy's very independent and headstrong. And there's this interesting part at the beginning of the book where it talks about how English women, you know, travel abroad and are kind of free to do that. There's just like this different, at least according to Bronte, this boldness about English women. But then you've also got this really bold and brilliant headmistress at the school. And even though she becomes an antagonist later, she's given her due respect in character painting. And you get to know both her strengths and her weaknesses, her lack of scruples in some areas, and yet her precision and strength in others. And Bronte even goes so far as in this passage to suggest what she might have been capable of if she had been allowed to run for office or, you know, oversee the police. And it's kind of funny, but at the same time, it's also a little bit tragic because obviously none of those options were open to her. And yet she manages to run the school in such a way that she's reasonably popular with students and parents. And yet she kind of takes things out on the teachers a bit and kind of runs a tight ship. I guess just a few more things I'm going to say. I didn't want this video to go on too long, but there is so much interesting in this first part. Now, I say this first part, but I'm only going to talk about chapters 1 through 13. Those aren't actually, I mean, part 1 actually ends a couple chapters later, but I feel like this is a natural breaking point for this video because the love interest enters the scene more clearly, you know, after chapter, when chapter 14 starts. But this whole section is about her and the headmistress and these other characters, Dr. John, the young doctor. If you've watched Cranefur, you get the idea. But there's this young doctor who shows up and everyone's crazy about him, etc. He's English as well. So that's the other thing that's interesting in this book is there's a lot of cultural conflict and Lucy Snow, probably Charlotte Bronte in real life, but Lucy Snow anyway, and she's like struggling with the cultural differences and she's struggling with the religious differences because Villette is very Catholic and obviously Lucy Snow is not. And, you know, to Lucy, it's not just that they're different, but they're heretical. Their beliefs are like a really bad version of Christianity that isn't true, and she feels this repulsion towards it. And the book has often criticized her being very anti-Catholic, which it is, but I think it's worth noting this was a very common belief at the time in England against, you know, it's part of that anti-French sentiment as well, I think. But all these things kind of get mixed up together so that you've got the cultural and the religious aversions happening at the same time. And yeah, if you were Roman Catholic, you might find a lot of offensive things in this book or the way she perceives Catholicism to be very offensive. But yeah, it is interesting anyway. And yeah, so I really have been enjoying that aspect of it as well because as someone who has moved to another country, I have a little bit more understanding of how it can be difficult to reconcile what you're brought up with or what you perceive slash think slash believe with the way other people are living. And even when there's a lot of similarities, it's almost as if that's what draws out the differences even more. Obviously, here there's also a language barrier, but she manages to overcome that reasonably quickly, I think. Obviously, French was the second language, I think. Well, a commonly taught second language in England at the time. So, you know, she had some foundation, but she had to build on it after she moved and tried to integrate more. I say integrate, but she's always, you know, very English nonetheless. That being said, so a note on additions. I got this addition secondhand because it's the one I read when I was younger and I was pictured, this girl on the cover as Lucy Snow. I think it really reflects, well, first of all, I think she's getting like little flowers or violets. Yeah, violets out of this envelope. So violets comes up at least once in this book. But, you know, Lucy looking down, her face always averted a little bit from the reader and from the people she's with. I guess the other thing that really moved me deeply about this first part before the romance kicks in, right, is just the way Lucy has to grapple with herself and what she wants and what she feels like she has to do. And this is something I could really strongly relate to when I read this book, actually. And for the, I don't know, the next however many years after I read the book, I mean, honestly 10 plus years with a few interludes. But just experiencing such isolation as I felt at the time, such friendlessness and sometimes despair, I think Lucy actually does a really good job of embodying that feeling, but also this determination to be strong and to not show emotions and to sometimes avoid people because it's too difficult to deal with those emotions and those needs that are unmet. And I just find this so interesting because I don't think I've read many books that go over that struggle. Because she's surrounded with people, but she's still so alone. And I think that in particular, seeing a woman's perspective here is really, it's something I could just really strongly relate to. And obviously back in the day, there were also all these social mores that had to be followed that might prevent somebody from really acting in a way that they, what would be more authentic to how they felt. But people had these really strong masks that they put up. So yeah. Anyway, that's why the book became so special to me because when I read it, I really resonated with Lucy. There's this part that I just read where she's, there's this big thunderstorm that happens and it just wakens a sense of longing, loss, and yearning inside of her. And she really struggles with this because she feels like that it's, you know, it's tearing at her own identity. She feels like she's Lucy Snow when she is able to contain all of that and to be cool and disconnected from things and be able to take everything in stride and be dependable and hard-working and not have any needs of anybody. But it's clear that's not true and that there are moments, especially in the way she connects with nature and these little private spaces that she manages to find within the spying eyes of this girl's school, you know, as somebody who connects strongly with nature, she finds the real side or the other side of herself, we could say, in that. And it's hard. It hurts. Because to confront that means you have to acknowledge you're missing something and that nothing's going to change if you just keep doing the same old thing. You keep waiting for things that don't happen or you keep, you know, suppressing what you actually need, which is, you know, companionship. It's love. It is belonging. So anyway, that was just such a beautiful scene and I'm really excited to get into the next part because I will say these first 200 pages are a very slow read. It went a lot faster when I was younger, but at this age and with me trying to do kind of this more closer reading, it took quite a bit longer to get through. But yeah, next part, we get to meet Monsieur Paul and all the stuff that happens with him. It gets to be a bit more entertaining as it goes. But yeah, I think the first part of the book is extremely powerful and has a lot to say about Lucy but also about Madame Beck and, you know, how people deal with disappointment, loneliness, and there's gonna be so much more to say about that as we get to the end of the book. But I'll stop there and I will hope to see you next time if I haven't bored you to tears. Bye!