Weird Stuff in Charlotte Brontë's Villette - Analysis of Chapters 14-16

Hi everyone, how are you doing today? I thought I would take some time to give a Villette update. I know it's been a while since the first video I did on this, and it probably seemed like I gave up. And to be honest, I did get a little bored. I was like page 190 or so and feeling a bit fatigued, mainly because I haven't had a lot of time to spend on this book, like long lengths of time. And I do find these Victorian novels, this is almost 600 pages by the way, I think these longer novels, they really benefit from a Christmas holiday or something where you've just got a whole week to read. And I've just been reading, you know, snatches on the train and stuff or in evenings, and I just don't think it worked well for this book for a while. But nonetheless, I'm back. I'm here to talk about three chapters, and I'll try to keep it short. But this book is starting to get quite interesting again, and weird. So we'll talk about that weirdness as quickly as possible, because I have pizza in the oven, and I am getting hungry. So this is Villette. Yes, this is the story of Lucy Snow, who is working as a teacher in fictional Belgium. Now, where we left off was chapter 13. Chapter 14 is the first chapter I'll discuss, and this is called The Fate. It is a party that Madame Beck, the headmistress, is throwing for herself. And at least I should say, she's not technically throwing it for herself, but I think she has a pretty strong hand in the proceedings. Anyway, the teachers are throwing it for her, but she's well aware, and it's not really a surprise. And I think that it seems like an odd thing to have out of school. I don't know. Might just be, like, the distance between us and the 1800s. But I also wonder if Charlotte Bronte was trying to suggest a bit of decadence on the part of these fictional Belgians. It seems like the way she's described the school up to this point is she thinks that they are much easier on students than English teachers, which is, in her mind, mostly a good thing. But maybe in this case, again, a bit decadent. Either way, there's a party. And the first kind of strange thing that happens is that Lucy Snow gets pulled into a school play because none of the girls are very good at acting, and they don't want to play this particular male character, who is a bit of a rake. He is one of the romantic interests, I think, of the main heroine in this play. And that heroine is played by one of the students named Ginevra. Now, I don't remember if I mentioned her in the first episode, but she is a young lady that Lucy Snow met on the steamship over, actually. And Ginevra is very flighty and very silly and very beautiful. So she's the main female character here in the play, and Lucy is playing this male lead that's supposed to be wooing her. It's quite weird in two ways. One, the reason she gets into this is because Mjr. Paul, the cantankerous school teacher, male school teacher, I think he's the only male school teacher at this point, he gets her to do this. He locks her in an attic and tells her to learn the lines, and it's played off as this humorous thing, but it's a bit weird, and I don't think that it's all that humorous, really. But that's kind of how Lucy's telling the story. And then there's another factor here, which is that Dr. John, whom I believe I mentioned before, Dr. John the Englishman, who has had a lot of visits to this school of late, he, as it turns out, is in love with Ginevra. Now, you might think that's a bit strange. I still think it's a bit strange. I don't know exactly how old Ginevra is, but you've got to keep in mind that at the time, you could have some very old, old, I guess, female students at a school like this, like, potentially in their very late teens, early 20s, I think. Not sure how old she is, but it still seems inappropriate either way. Dr. John has also been invited to this festivity. He, you know, he's kind of got this on and off thing with Ginevra, and Lucy's playing the role of this guy trying to win Ginevra over, and Lucy kind of feels like she wants to be a bit provocative here. She says, um, I hardened my heart, rivaled and outrivaled him, Dr. John. I knew myself but a fop, but where he was outcast, I could please. Now I know I acted as if wishful and resolute to win and conquer, and so on and so on. So, um, Lucy really throws herself into this, and you might be thinking, well, this is really weird, um, because that's not really, doesn't seem like Lucy, and, you know, it does, like, raise questions about her gender, sexuality, that kind of thing, um, at least on a surface reading, and, you know, there's certainly textual evidence for having those questions. That being said, what really becomes interesting is how she goes on to describe how she felt as playing this role, and she says here, um, I quite disapproved, so this is the next day, and she's thinking back on what she did, I quite disapproved of these amateur performances, and though glad I had obliged to measure Paul and tried my own strength for once, I took a firm resolution never to be drawn into a similar affair, and she goes on to talk about how she just enjoyed it way too much. She loved being an actor, actress here, and she kind of, uh, relates this to being an active participant in life itself, and you'll see this again and again with Lucy Snow, where she's really struggling between, um, holding back, being stoic, being, uh, you know, not taking up any space. That's, like, one side of her. The other side of her, which is fighting for superiority, it's to be more outgoing, and, um, actively participate in life, and not just wait till things happen to her, but start making things happen. It's like in the previous section when she decided, you know, she'd go to London, and then again that she did, she'd go to a new country. Like, there's that side of Lucy, and then there's a side of her that just turtles. So this tension between her liberation and her turtling, I think that's what this is really about, this weird scene with the play. And it, of course, just ends with her withdrawing into herself again. And there is this part as well at the end of this where she's, like, scolding Dr. John about his, uh, you know, his relationship with Geneva, and she just thinks, you know, Geneva's not good enough for him, and he's being silly. And, uh, she gets really, uh, outspoken about this. And again, it's not really like her, but because she played that role in the play, it kind of loosened her up in a way that she could then turn to Dr. John and tell him how she really felt about, uh, his, I guess, his behavior slash his perceptions of Geneva. We'll come back to that. But anyway, the fate is, like, probably the first kind of, like, unusual happening, uh, since she's arrived at the school. And then there is the long vacation, chapter 15. Um, this has been described by some people as, like, the best description of what it's like to have depression. And, um, as someone who has definitely had a long history with that, I can say, yes, there is a lot in here that just really rings true. She does a couple of things that I think people in this state of mind tend to do. One, she does something completely out of character, and she goes to, well, she goes to a church, which is in character, but then she ends up going to confession with a Catholic priest. And, um, that ends up being really important for her because he, you know, she doesn't like Catholics, she's very prejudiced against them, but he shows her, um, you know, a moment of kindness and understanding. And that just gives her, you know, just sort of a, it sort of picks her up, um, when she most needs it. And, you know, it clearly left enough impression on her that she included it in this narrative. But then she goes on this long walk and just kind of drives herself into exhaustion. And, um, I think that that too is something I can relate to. Sometimes when you're in a really bad mental state, you'll, you'll get out, you'll go taking a long walk or going for a long run just to try to shake yourself out of that mindset. And so she goes on this really long walk, runs herself ragged. And then we come to chapter 16. Chapter 16 is the strangest of the strange here. And it's actually the beginning of volume two. Uh, and I think, um, I'm not really sure why it was divided right here when I kind of think there was a more natural breaking point earlier in the book. Either way, uh, things are starting to happen now, volume two, not the least of which. And, uh, in this chapter, Lucy wakes up in a strange house, but she realizes very quickly that it's not a strange house. She looks around and recognizes furniture. She sees a little pin cushion that she made years and years ago. And so it's really this weird deja vu moment, kind of twilight zoney. And then she realizes she's in her godmother's house again, Mrs. Breton. I think I just barely touched upon Mrs. Breton in the first part of the book and probably should have said a bit more, but it didn't seem to have a lot of consequence, uh, in the beginning of the book. But yeah, she, when she was younger, she'd go and spend time with her godmother, Mrs. Breton, and Mrs. Breton had a son named Graham, um, a boisterous young man, handsome, charming, full of life. And when, uh, Lucy's waking up in her godmother's new home that's furnished with the old furnishings, she sees this picture of Graham and she remembers looking at it when she was a young girl. I say young, let's say 15, 16, 14 teenager, um, and she used to take the picture down and look at it. And it's now we're, we're seeing now something she didn't tell us before, not directly, but Lucy's showing us that she had this childhood crush on Graham. But that's not the In just a few paragraphs, she then reveals that Graham is Dr. John and that she has been hiding this from the reader and hiding it from Dr. John all along. This is, this is really unsettling for a lot of readers. In fact, some people find it extremely off-putting and they don't, uh, they feel like she's an unreliable narrator. They feel like she doesn't respect the reader. And, uh, you know, it just, it really causes a great deal of frustration for some people. And I think the, the thing that makes this one step weirder is that Charlotte Bronte, or Lucy, is trying to get us to believe as well that Dr. John, uh, never learned Lucy's last name. They were never properly introduced, even though they've had conversations together. And she also wants us to believe that Dr. John never recognized Lucy either, and is shocked when this big reveal happens. Now, I think, I think Charlotte Bronte is a very, very intelligent writer. I've read all of her novels at this point, and I don't think this is a case of lazy writing or just Victorian coincidences taken to the extreme. I think, rather than going down those routes, which to me seem practically impossible, given that Charlotte Bronte and, you know, she's a very skilled writer. Rather, I think it just kind of begs the question, what does she want us to take from this? And, and what are we to take from Lucy about this? Is, is, for example, Dr. John lying? Did he actually recognize Lucy as well and simply not reintroduce himself either? Did they, did they both do this thing? Is Lucy's appearance drastically altered over the course of 10 years? Maybe she lost a lot of weight. Maybe she's gone a bit gray in early age. You know, some people just do change quite a bit from age, you know, say 15 to 25 or so. You know, maybe he genuinely didn't recognize her. And I think we also have to ask the question, why did Lucy never reveal herself to Dr. John? There's some hints that there was a misunderstanding between her and Mrs. Breton at some point, that we never told what that was about. There was never any actual quarrel that we can see, so it must have been pretty minor, but there was some, some distancing that happened between them over these years. Still, I do think it's odd that Lucy never reveals herself to Dr. John. I mean, she's in a strange country and she's very, you know, she's very grateful of Dr. John's presence, um, although now we know more of why, because we, we now find out that she had these feelings for him all along and that's one of the reasons, I think, that she feels this repulsion against Geneva and against Geneva's flirting with Dr. John, because Lucy has had these feelings all along for him, and I think she's disappointed that Dr. John has been falling for Geneva. So what reasons might she have, though, to hide herself from him? Well, maybe to learn his true character, to see how he does interact with Geneva, to be able to speak to him as she did earlier, um, you know, talking to him more as equals, from a position of detachment, even. She was very forthright with him earlier. Maybe this anonymity gave her that ability to be forthright, or, you know, maybe Lucy was embarrassed. Maybe she used to be viewed as the poor relation, or we don't really know what happened there, but maybe she didn't want to bring up whatever had happened in the past. She doesn't really give a satisfactory explanation here, um, but I do think that this, uh, device, this contrivance, as some would say it is, actually has some kind of deeper meaning. I don't think that Charlotte Bronte was trying to be slapdash about the plot or the characters. I think she wanted to tell us something about this, about Lucy in particular, maybe even about Lucy's mental health. You know, sometimes when people are in a dark place, they do want to, um, very much distance themselves from people they know, even people they love. It can also affect their capacity to remember things or interact with the world. Um, that being said, Lucy is writing this as an older woman, so that adds yet another layer that we can think about. Um, I think I'll just finish here, and this will be my kind of food for thought question, um, and, uh, this can really pertain to Villette or any book, really, but, you know, we've talked a little bit about what does the author owe the reader, if anything. Um, Heather Reads brought this up in a recent video about an author who wishes to remain anonymous, and so my question would be, what does the narrator owe the reader, if anything? Um, and should we be upset if a narrator is unreliable? Should we be frustrated with Lucy, um, or is there something else going on here? So those are my thoughts on just three chapters. Hopefully this will speed up a bit after this, but I hope, um, it just kind of, uh, helped add some, I guess, some perspective to Lucy Snow. I love this character. I do think she is very flawed, but I think she's worth trying to get to know. Um, thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye!