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Villette (Penguin Classics)

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The publication of Gaskell’s bestselling biography just two years after Brontë’s death in 1855 at last revealed the author’s name and sex to the public, and told the riveting story of her struggle, with her sisters Emily and Anne, to become a writer, the siblings’ isolated lives in their remote Yorkshire home and their tragic early deaths. The burgeoning cult of “the Brontës” raised the stakes of the guessing game about how closely their novels reflected life, leading to a bizarre situation when the owners of the school in Lancashire that the girls had attended became so annoyed about its identification with spartan Lowood in Jane Eyre that they threatened legal action for defamation – against a novel. With regard to the acting of the great, the “possessed” Rachel, it made as deep an impression on Charlotte Brontë, as it produced much about the same time on Matthew Arnold. Mrs. Smith, Mr. George Smith’s mother, was even more closely drawn—sometimes to words and phrases which are still remembered—in the Mrs. Bretton of the book.

Villette was Charlotte Brontë's third and last novel published during her life. It was preceded in writing by The Professor (her posthumously published first novel, of which Villette is a reworking, though still not very similar), Jane Eyre, and Shirley. On the other hand, English novels by men—with the great exceptions of Richardson in the last century, and George Meredith in this, from Fielding and Scott onwards, are not, as a rule, studies of love. They are rather studies of manners, politics, adventure.Brontë was of slight build and was less than five feet tall. [19] Brussels and Haworth [ edit ] Plaque in Brussels, on the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels But it is love as the woman understands it. And here again is their second strength. Their peculiar vision, their omissions quite as much as their assertions, make them welcome. Balzac, Flaubert, Anatole France, Paul Bourget, dissect a complex reality, half physical, half moral; they are students, psychologists, men of science first, poets afterwards. One more patient effort, however, in this autumn of 1852, and the book at last was done. She sent the later portion of it, trembling, to her publishers. The poor story-teller struggled in vain against illness and melancholy. She writes to Mrs. Gaskell of “deep dejection of spirits,” and to Mr. Williams that it is no use grumbling over hindered powers or retarded work, “for no words can make a change.” I turned from the group of trees and the ‘merrie companie’ in its shade. Midnight was long past; the concert was over, the crowds were thinning. I followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and well-lit Haute-Ville … I sought the dim lower quarter.

It is a matter between Currer Bell “and his position, his faculties, and his fate.” Was it during these months of physical weakness—haunted, too, by the longing for her sisters and the memory of their deaths—that she wrote the wonderful chapters describing Lucy Snowe’s delirium of fever and misery during her lonely holidays at the pensionnat? Jamaica Kincaid's novel Lucy (1990) draws numerous themes, character names, and plot elements from Villette, both echoing its concern of female repression while also offering an implicit postcolonial critique of the novel's slave-owning love interest. [7] In dramatisations [ edit ] I think it much quieter than Shirley,” said Charlotte, writing to Mrs. Gaskell just before the book’s appearance. “It will not be considered pretentious,” she says, in the letter that announces the completion of the manuscript. Strange!—as though it were her chief hope that the public would receive it as the more modest offering of a tamed muse. And then slowly, almost unconsciously, there grows up the real affinity, the love “venturing diffidently into life after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy.” The whole experience is life itself, as a woman’s heart can feel and make it. No novel, moreover, that escapes obscurity and ugliness was ever freer from stereotyped forms and phrases. The writer’s fresh inventive sense is perpetually brushing them away as with a kind of impatience. The phrases come out new minted, shining; each a venture, and, as a rule, a happy one; yet with no effect of labour or research; rather of a careless freedom and wealth.

I think readers today can still identify with this struggle — of trying to understand ourselves, of wrestling with our natures, of trying to be something we are not. I know that I often fight against who I am, both the negative and the positive, and struggle with the desire to be someone else, that elusive “other” I think I should be. The night of a dramatic storm, Miss Marchmont regains all her energy and feels young again. She shares with Lucy her sad love story of 30 years ago, and concludes that she should treat Lucy better and be a better person. She believes that death will reunite her with her dead lover. The next morning, Lucy finds Miss Marchmont died in the night. If I could always live with you, and daily read the bible with you, if your lips and mine could at the same time, drink the same draught from the same pure fountain of Mercy – I hope, I trust, I might one day become better, far better, than my evil wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit, and warm to the flesh will now permit me to be. [52] The Life of Charlotte Brontë [ edit ] Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Brontë Parsonage Museum The focus of the book lies primarily with the development of Lucy’s character. Because I had read Lyndall Gordon’s amazing biography of Charlotte beforehand, I felt prepared for Villette.

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