Nathanael73's Full Review: Charlotte Bronte, Tim Dolin, Deborah Lutz - Villet...
I have read literally hundreds of books in my lifetime, perhaps thousands, and I do not hesitate in making the claim that I enjoyed every one of them infinitely more than Charlotte Bronte’s tedious Villette, even the ones I can’t remember. There is only one other book that I detest as much as Villette: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Villette is set in the late nineteenth century. The protagonist, Lucy Snowe, is a middle-class Englishwoman who finds herself orphaned and homeless near the beginning of the novel. Bronte doesn’t clearly state what has happened to Lucy’s family, but the hints point towards a shipwreck. As a single woman from a good family, but lacking an income, Lucy has few options. Without a husband, brother or father to support her, she must chose from a few avenues of employment: governess, servant or teacher. Lucy has heard that there is a demand for English ladies to work abroad as governesses, so she boldly sails for the fictional country of Labassecour (loosely modeled on Belgium, where Charlotte Bronte worked for several years).
On the voyage across the channel, Lucy makes the acquaintance of one Ginevra Fanshawe, a spoilt upper-crust English girl, who will figure prominently in the story at a later date. Upon arriving in Labassecour, Lucy manages to find a position as a governess at a school for girls run by Madame Beck, in the town of Villette.
The school, the Rue Fossette, is the setting for almost all of the novels 600-plus pages of “action.” Lucy progresses from being a lowly Governess to a respected teacher, eventually rising so far in society that she hob-nobs with the aristocracy, courts the leading academic in town, Monsieur Paul Emanuel, and eventually sets up her own school. Along the way she manages to become perfectly fluent in French within a matter of months, and by the end of the book has almost mastered German too.
One of the main reasons I disliked Villette is Bronte’s repeated use of fantastic circumstances and coincidences. In order to advance the plot and keep from introducing new characters, she re-introduces characters in new settings, sometimes with new names. When Lucy first arrives in Villette, without a word of French at her disposal, she asks directions from a passing stranger, who just happens to be English. Not only is he English, it also transpires that he is a childhood family friend named John Graham Bretton, who also happens to be the same Dr. John who cares for the children at the Rue Fossette, and later cares for Lucy herself. There are several such plot contrivances in Villette. Bronte too often stretches the plot to breaking point.
Lucy Snowe tells the story in the past tense. Her narration is uneven at best. She often slips out of the first-person narrator role into the omniscient third-person role, even addressing the reader directly at times. Every few pages a paragraph is written entirely in French, without translation. The notes at the back of the edition* do not adequately translate these passages, even though they are often quite crucial to the plot. It seems that Bronte was merely indulging herself by showing off her linguistic skills. Surely she was aware that not all her readers read French. As I am sadly monolingual, my wife kindly translated the passages for me (fortunately I have a French-speaking wife, not all readers are so lucky).
In addition to the use of French and the fantastical plot contrivances, the novel is exceedingly long, with three volumes, weighing in at 618 pages. At least two hundred pages could have been cut without compromising the heart of the story. Bronte often indulges in long, tedious descriptive passages.
And finally, my number one reason for disliking this book so much: the protagonist, Lucy Snowe. I like to think of myself as fairly easy-going and open-minded and able to relate to most people. But I just couldn’t stand Lucy Snowe! She is judgmental, narrow-minded, repressed, snobbish, conservative, and boring. Some scholars champion her as a fine example of a Victorian woman bucking the system and making her own way in a man’s world. While I admire her for making it on her own and being successful in her career, I feel that any other woman in her situation would have achieved as much, if not a whole lot more. Lucy fails to take many opportunities and lets society dictate how she should behave. She does not break out of the role that Victorian society has dictated to be her lot.
Those of you who have read this far are probably wondering why I even bothered to finish reading Villette, if I despise it so much. There is a simple explanation. I had to study the book and write a paper on it as part of my Masters degree in English. Otherwise, for the first time in my life, I may well have discarded a book without finishing it. I advise you to stay away from Villette if at all possible!
* NB: This review is of the Oxford World's Classics edition.
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