Villette

Summary

Lucy Snowe tells her own story, years after the events, in a reserved voice that often withholds what she feels and sometimes what she knows. As a girl she stays with her godmother Mrs. Bretton in the old town of Bretton, where she watches the tiny, intense Paulina Home attach herself to Mrs. Bretton's teenage son Graham. Some unnamed family calamity then leaves Lucy alone and without means. She serves as companion to the crippled Miss Marchmont, who dies after telling her own story of lost love, and with fifteen pounds Lucy crosses to the Continent. On the boat she meets the pretty, careless Ginevra Fanshawe, a pupil at a girls' school in Villette, capital of the kingdom of Labassecour. Lost in the city at night, Lucy arrives at Madame Beck's pensionnat in the Rue Fossette and is hired, first as nursery governess and then as English teacher. Madame Beck runs her house by quiet surveillance, searching drawers and reading letters. The school's handsome English doctor, Dr. John, is courting Ginevra, who prefers the dandy Colonel de Hamal. Left alone in the empty school through the long vacation with a single disabled pupil, Lucy falls into a nervous collapse; in desperation she confesses to a Catholic priest, Père Silas, and faints in the street. She wakes at La Terrasse in the home of Mrs. Bretton, and learns that Dr. John is Graham Bretton, whom she had recognised weeks before without saying so. Lucy comes to love Graham, buries his letters under an old pear tree when she sees his affection go to Paulina, now grown and reunited with her father, the Count de Bassompierre. The figure of a nun, said to haunt the garden, appears to Lucy several times. Meanwhile the fiery, exacting professor M. Paul Emanuel, Madame Beck's kinsman, quarrels with her, teaches her, and slowly reveals his devotion; their friendship survives a long argument over his Catholic faith and her Protestant one, and the efforts of Madame Beck, Père Silas and the old Madame Walravens to keep them apart. Drugged with an opiate one night, Lucy wanders to a festival in the park and wrongly concludes that Paul will marry his ward. The nun proves to be de Hamal in disguise, who elopes with Ginevra. Before sailing for three years to the West Indies on the Walravens' business, Paul gives Lucy a house and school of her own in the Faubourg Clotilde and asks her to share his life. The three years are the happiest of hers. The last page describes a seven-day Atlantic storm as his ship is due, and leaves the reader to imagine his return. Smith, Elder published the novel in three volumes in January 1853 under the pseudonym Currer Bell. It draws on Brontë's own two years in Brussels at the Pensionnat Héger.

Plot or Argument

• Bretton (Chapters I–III)

  The girl Lucy watches six-year-old Paulina Home grieve for her absent father and then devote herself to Graham Bretton. The scenes establish Lucy as an observer who reports others' feelings and hides her own.

• Miss Marchmont and the voyage (Chapters IV–VII)

  After an unexplained shipwreck of family fortune, Lucy nurses Miss Marchmont until her death, goes to London alone, and takes ship for Boue-Marine. She meets Ginevra Fanshawe on board and, robbed of her trunk and lost at night, finds Madame Beck's door.

• The Rue Fossette (Chapters VIII–XIV)

  Madame Beck tests and employs Lucy, who wins her classroom by firmness. Dr. John attends the school; a casket thrown into the garden reveals intrigue; at Madame's fête M. Paul forces Lucy to act a part in a play, and she plays it well.

• The long vacation and La Terrasse (Chapters XV–XVIII)

  Alone through the holidays, Lucy suffers sleeplessness and despair, confesses to Père Silas, and collapses. She wakes among her old Bretton furniture, recognises Mrs. Bretton, and has her quiet discovery about Dr. John confirmed.

• Graham and Paulina (Chapters XIX–XXVI)

  Lucy views the Cleopatra in the gallery, attends a concert, and sees the actress Vashti perform before a fire breaks out in the theatre, where Graham rescues the young Paulina. Graham's letters make Lucy briefly happy; seeing his heart turn to Paulina, she buries them.

• M. Paul (Chapters XXVII–XXXVI)

  M. Paul's temper, gifts and kindnesses draw Lucy to him. On an errand to Madame Walravens she learns of his long fidelity to a dead fiancée, Justine Marie, and of his support of her family. He offers brotherly friendship, and they debate faith; Lucy holds to her Protestant creed.

• Cloud (Chapters XXXVII–XL)

  Graham and Paulina are betrothed with her father's blessing. Madame Beck schemes to send Paul abroad. Given an opiate, Lucy wanders to the moonlit festival, misreads Paul's attention to his ward, and finds the nun's habit in her bed: the ghost was de Hamal, now eloped with Ginevra.

• Faubourg Clotilde and Finis (Chapters XLI–XLII)

  Paul shows Lucy the house he has prepared as her school and declares his love. During his three years abroad she prospers and reads his letters; the novel ends with a storm at sea and a deliberately open account of his homecoming.

Characters

• Lucy Snowe, narrator and protagonist

  Reserved, proud and lonely English teacher who endures poverty and isolation in a foreign city.

• M. Paul Emanuel, professor and beloved

  Small, fiery, devout Catholic teacher of literature whose temper hides deep generosity.

• Dr. John Graham Bretton, physician

  Handsome, good-humoured English doctor in Villette, son of Lucy's godmother.

• Paulina Mary Home de Bassompierre, Graham's love

  Intense child at Bretton who grows into a gentle young countess and marries Graham.

• Madame Beck, head of the pensionnat

  Capable, watchful directress who governs her school by espionage and calm.

• Ginevra Fanshawe, pupil

  Pretty, vain and candid English girl who flirts with Graham and elopes with de Hamal.

• Mrs. Bretton, godmother

  Lucy's brisk, warm-hearted godmother, Graham's mother.

• Père Silas, priest

  Kindly, persuasive Catholic confessor who hears Lucy's confession and hopes to convert her.

• Colonel Alfred de Hamal, suitor

  Dandified officer who courts Ginevra and turns out to be the garden's nun.

Lessons

• Endurance in solitude

  Lucy has no family, money or beauty to lean on, and she says plainly that she must live by her own work. Her endurance is not cheerful, but it is real: she keeps her post, her word and her creed through loneliness that nearly breaks her.

  • What does Lucy lose before she leaves England, and how does she decide to go abroad?
  • Is Lucy's reserve a strength, a defence, or both?
  • Where does the novel show that endurance needs help from others?

• An unreliable, honest narrator

  Lucy conceals that she has recognised Graham, misleads the reader about her own feelings, and admits it afterwards. Brontë uses this reticence to make us feel how a proud, poor woman guards her inner life, and to make us read more carefully.

  • Why does Lucy keep the identity of Dr. John from the reader for so long?
  • How does her habit of watching others shape what we learn about her?
  • Can a narrator who withholds facts still be truthful?

• Faith across a divide

  Lucy, a firm Protestant in a Catholic country, and M. Paul, a devout Catholic, argue their faiths and end by respecting each other's sincerity. He asks her to remain a Protestant, and she trusts the goodness she sees in him.

  • Why does Lucy go to confession to Père Silas, and why does she not return?
  • What does each side say for itself in the debate of Chapter XXXVI?
  • What makes their respect possible without either giving up conviction?

• Hope without guarantee

  The final chapter gives Lucy three years of happiness and then a storm, leaving Paul's fate to the reader. The ending asks whether a life can be counted good when its happiness is brief or uncertain.

  • Why does Lucy tell sunny imaginations to keep hope?
  • Why might Brontë have chosen an open ending rather than a wedding?
  • What has Lucy gained that the storm cannot take away?

Context

Villette is Brontë's portrait of Brussels, capital of the young kingdom of Belgium, renamed Labassecour. English Protestant feeling about Catholicism ran high around 1850, when the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850 provoked public debate, and the novel's religious arguments belong to that climate. Teaching was among the few respectable livelihoods open to an educated single woman without means.

Composition

Brontë studied and then taught at the Pensionnat Héger in Brussels in 1842–1844, and M. Paul owes much to Constantin Héger, to whom she wrote letters after her return. She wrote Villette in 1851–1852, after the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne, and her publisher George Smith and his mother are widely taken as models for Graham and Mrs. Bretton. Smith, Elder issued it in three volumes in January 1853.

Reception

Many reviewers admired its power while finding Lucy cold or the ending painful; Harriet Martineau objected to its preoccupation with love and to its handling of Catholicism. George Eliot wrote in a letter that she thought it a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. It is now often ranked as Brontë's most accomplished novel.

Comparisons

• jane-eyre

  Both are first-person stories of a plain, poor young woman who earns her bread by teaching; Jane's frank voice ends in marriage, while Lucy's guarded voice ends in an open question.

• the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall

  Anne Brontë's novel also gives a woman's own written account of hard years and of faith tested, through Helen Graham's diary.

• middlemarch

  Eliot, who admired Villette, likewise follows a woman's search for useful work and a worthy love within narrow provincial limits.

• the-pilgrims-progress

  Lucy calls on Bunyan's imagery of pilgrimage and trial, and her lonely journey to a strange city reads in places like a Protestant pilgrim's progress.

• cranford

  Gaskell, Brontë's friend and first biographer, wrote of genteel single women making do on small means in an English town, with comedy instead of solitude.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Moments when Lucy tells you she is hiding something from you, and what she reveals later.
• The nun in the garden and garret, and how each sighting matches Lucy's state of mind.
• Madame Beck's soft-footed searches of drawers and letters.
• M. Paul's outbursts and the small kindnesses that follow them.
• Weather, especially storms, at the turning points of Lucy's life.

Key terms and names

Labassecour

Brontë's invented name for Belgium; Villette, 'small town', is its capital, modelled on Brussels.

Pensionnat

A boarding school; Madame Beck's is in the Rue Fossette.

Long vacation

The summer holiday in which Lucy is left alone in the school and breaks down.

Vashti

Lucy's name for a great tragic actress, after the queen in Esther 1, whose performance overwhelms her.

Hypochondria

A period term for low spirits and morbid anxiety, personified by Lucy as a dark companion.

Faubourg Clotilde

The suburb where M. Paul prepares a house and day-school for Lucy.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Lucy come to be teaching in Madame Beck's school?
2. Comprehension What happens to Lucy during the long vacation, and where does she wake?
3. Comprehension Who is the nun, and why has the disguise been used?
4. Interpretation Why does Brontë contrast Paulina's easy happiness with Lucy's harder road?
5. Interpretation What do Lucy's responses to the Cleopatra painting and to Vashti tell us about her?
6. Interpretation How does M. Paul change in Lucy's eyes, and what changes him in ours?
7. Big Question Can a life marked by loneliness and loss still be a life of providence and purpose?
8. Big Question How should people of sincere but different faiths treat one another?

Faith Connections

• Psalm 46:1–3 (Scripture)

  God as refuge when the waters roar fits Lucy's prayers in the storms of the long vacation and the final tempest at sea.

• Romans 14:4–13 (Scripture)

  Paul's counsel not to judge another's servant speaks to the mutual respect Lucy and M. Paul reach across their churches.

• Esther 1:10–12 (Scripture)

  Queen Vashti's refusal supplies the name Lucy gives the actress in Chapter XXIII.

• William Cowper, "God moves in a mysterious way" (Great Conversation)

  Cowper's hymn on hidden providence behind frowning clouds suits a heroine who trusts God through a fate she does not understand.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Lucy argues by her own life that a solitary woman can keep integrity, faith and self-respect without the usual supports, and that real worth may lie hidden behind a plain and quiet exterior.

Rhetorical device: personification. Lucy turns inner states into figures, such as Hypochondria and the hag Disappointment, so that her moods appear as visitors with faces.

Debate: Resolved: that Lucy was right to conceal her recognition of Dr. John from him and from the reader.

Memory Work

Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue whether Lucy Snowe is a reliable narrator, using her concealment of Dr. John, her account of the long vacation, and the open ending.

Comparison with Jane Eyre: Compare Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe as narrators: how does each speak of her feelings, her faith, and the man she loves?

Medical Lens

Villette is one of the fullest Victorian first-person accounts of depressive collapse. In the long vacation Lucy describes sleeplessness, dread, a sense of fate as her foe and a 'deadlier paralysis' in storms, ending in a faint in the street; Dr. John, a well-drawn young physician, gives the period's standard counsel for low spirits (company, exercise, not being alone) and admits that pill and potion cannot reach 'Hypochondria', a word then covering melancholy as well as health anxiety. Lucy's personifications of Hypochondria and of Despair recur. In Chapter XXXVIII Madame Beck has her given a strong opiate to keep her quiet, and the drug produces excitement and vivid night wandering instead of stupor, a paradoxical reaction Brontë describes closely. Miss Marchmont's invalid years and death, and the disabled pupil left in Lucy's care, add sickroom material. Brontë wrote the book after the deaths of three siblings, and readers have connected Lucy's states with her own letters about low spirits; such links, and any modern diagnosis of Lucy, are interpretive readings.

• Ch. IV

  Lucy nurses the rheumatic invalid Miss Marchmont, hears her story on her last night, and finds her dead in the morning.

  Death Dying Nursing Caregiving
• Ch. XV

  The long vacation: Lucy alone with a disabled pupil, then wholly alone, sleepless and despairing, until she confesses at a church and collapses.

  Melancholia Depression Sleep Insomnia Disability Deformity
• Ch. XVII

  Dr. John questions Lucy about her nervous system and prescribes cheerful society and exercise, conceding the limits of medicine.

  Physicians Doctors Hypochondria
• Ch. XXII

  Lucy sees the nun in the garret and Dr. John speaks of spectral illusion as a possible effect of long mental conflict.

  Altered States Physicians Doctors
• Ch. XXXVIII

  Lucy is given a sweet drink containing a strong opiate; instead of sleep it brings excitement, and she walks out to the moonlit park festival.

  Opium Laudanum Altered States Sleep Insomnia

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write one of the letters M. Paul sends Lucy from the West Indies during his three years away.

• Essay

  Trace the appearances of the nun and explain how the novel turns a Gothic ghost into an ordinary deceit.

• Dialogue

  Stage the conversation between Lucy and Père Silas in the confessional, giving each of them their sincerest reasons.

• Classroom

  Map Villette onto Brussels: the Rue Fossette, the Basse-Ville, the park and the Faubourg Clotilde, using Brontë's letters from 1842–1844.

Further Reading

• The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell

  The first biography (1857), by her friend, including the Brussels years.

• The Professor, Charlotte Brontë

  Brontë's first novel, published in 1857, also set in a Brussels school.

• The Brontës, Juliet Barker

• Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart, Claire Harman