Villette

Villette, Charlotte Bronte’s third published novel, was partly based on her experiences working in a school in Brussels as a young woman. Its protagonist is Lucy Snowe, orphaned at a young age and required to make her own way in the world almost friendless, who by a series of coincidences ends up working in a girls’ school in the small (fictional) town of Villette, where also dwells a childhood friend.

I’m a fairly large fan of Jane Eyre, CB’s masterpiece, but for reasons not clear to me had never actually attempted any of her other works. I hate, hate, hate Wuthering Heights, and even though I know the three Brontes are all radically different from one another, possibly I was worried that Jane Eyre was a fluke amid an oeuvre otherwise populated with Romantic trash. Well, Villette does have some Gothic elements – most notably a ghostly nun rumoured to haunt the school. (The mystery of this spectre is resolved in due course, in a way that might remind the astute reader of that classic work of anti-Gothicism, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. To that reader, I say: if in doubt, read Austen instead.) Overall though, the emphases are on the twin Protestant virtues of moral purity and hard work.

I use the word “Protestant” advisedly. The Patriarch Bronte was a C of E vicar, and when Charlotte finds herself (slash her protagonist) surrounded by Catholic France, look out. I’m pretty sure this novel wins the prize for the most frequent use of the word “Jesuit” as a derogatory adjective. The headmistress of the school, in particular, has her habits of spying on and manipulating her employees dismissed as the natural results of her Catholic heritage – on the bright side, this seems to absolve her of any guilt associated with them. When Lucy becomes friends with another (French) teacher, we can look forward to loooooong interior monologues about religious differences and the superiority of the Protestant churches. In perfect fairness, I pretty much agree that, to the variable extent that religions can be approached on a strictly rational basis, Catholicism probably isn’t going to win any awards. But it’s not very interesting subject-matter for a novel, especially when treated of in such a long-winded and repetitive way.

It’s been a while since I went back to Jane Eyre, but I definitely have a recollection of it moving more quickly than Villette. The first few chapters are relatively (for a mid-19th century novel) action-packed, but once we get to France, things pretty much grind to a halt. I would estimate that around 70 per cent of the novel consists of Lucy’s interior monologue, and considering what a puritan* she is, her inner life is not overly dramatic. Probably the worst part is the radical overuse of laboured metaphors – Lucy/CB can take something like “my heart is a tree, its roots buried in the God-fearing soil of England” and stretch it out to at least ten pages. (I made that one up, but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in there somewhere.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that I understand why this book is a classic: for one thing, the extent to which the true and passionate feelings of the protagonist can be concealed in a first-person narration would likely have been revelatory for its early readership. Sadly, in my case, that wasn’t enough to balance out the frustrating boredom of the actual reading experience.

*Ironic use of the word “puritan”, since Lucy regards actual Puritanism as a cult.