Villette by Charlotte Brontë

“My godmother lived in a handsome house…” An odd opening, not starting with the first-person narrator or her family, but her godmother.

"Nobody spoke. Mrs. Bretton, being a mother, shed a tear or two. Graham… lifted up his eyes and gazed at her. I, Lucy Snowe, was calm.” This structure, “I, Lucy Snowe,” always thrills: the urge to conceal is underlined by a strong statement about herself.

"Though I forced myself torealize evils, I think I was too prosaic to idealize.” This is why I place Villette above many novels, including Jane Eyre. Nothing in life—love, loss, travail, triumph—is idealized. Reality never fits into a neat narrative arc.

These chapters bring back the memory of my first day in the US. I couldn’t find a payphone—not in the three American airports en route to Iowa City nor in the guesthouse—that would allow an international call. I knew no one in the entire state of Iowa.

"Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could be desired?” Madame Beck: as thrilling as Tolstoy’s Napoleon!

There is an air of masquerade around Madame Beck. Miss Fanshawe, Dr. John, even the children, and of course Lucy, all participate.

"He perhaps was not in love; but how many people ever do love, or at least marry for love in this world? We waited the end.” Fascinating slip here: Lucy uses “we” instead of “I.” She doesn’t have anyone to be part of a “we”; only her urge to hide.

"The eyes of the flowers had gained vision, and the knots in the tree-boles listened like secret ears.” Lucy in the garden, just as Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers, though here the flowers are more threatening than the tiger lilies and daisies.

Lucy’s wry humor shines in this chapter. My favorite moment: she threatens a duel with St. Pierre (“if she were not a lady and I a gentleman”). M. Paul, not missing a beat, offers his pistols to settle “the old quarrel of France and England.” Hohoho.

"Religious reader, you will preach to me… and so will you, moralist; and you, stern sage: you, stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh.” A strong indictment from someone who suffers a debilitating depression to those who don’t understand.

"The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a racking sort of struggle.” An apt description of depression: self wrestling with self.

"The general tenor of a life” and Lucy’s aspiration to “enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on the surface”: so much of her willfulness to self-regulate results from the necessity of being an orphan, now rootless in a foreign country…

"He often talked nonsense; but I strove to be unfailingly patient with him.” It may be that my mood is wrong for today’s reading, but I find this chapter with Dr. John and Lucy, both blinded by love, rather giggle-worthy.

Lucy seeing herself in the mirror is the same moment when Natasha sees herself in the mirror at her first ball in War and Peace. What an experience of seeing oneself anew, which is lost to us who have mirrors of all sizes, shop windows, and phone cameras.

"I dearly liked to think my own thoughts; I had great pleasure in reading a few books, but not many.” Lucy speaks my heart!

"No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness.” Poor Dr. John. Really a prototype of a self-help author in today’s chapter.

Lucy speaks of herself in third person, in the generic form of a hermit, of his inward winter. “Poor wretch!” Oh poor Lucy. In that aspect I beat you. I do speak to myself in second person: “You, you idiot!”

An oddly disheartening chapter! Mr. Home and Mrs. Bretton engaged in an endless conversation, Polly and Graham playing hide and seek with their feelings. A rerun of the earlier chapters in Bretton, though Lucy feels a bit subdued.

"One day after she had borrowed them of me (in speaking of so suave a little woman, one ought to use suave terms)...” I rather enjoy the relationship between Madame Beck and Lucy: refreshingly unfussy and unemotional, unlike most female relationships we read.

"In a second of time, a head, chest and arms, grew above the crimson desk.” Quite an astonishing way to introduce a character’s physical appearance. Almost cinematic, with such a giggly sense of humor. M. Paul inspires freshness in the narrative!

M. Paul brings out hilarity and humor not only from Lucy but from minor characters. Rosine, a functional character so far, speaks against M. Paul’s tantrum, that for her service, “Madame must really hire a gendarme.” Brava, Rosine.

"I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad.” All lives, dear Lucy Snowe, are perishable, rootless or rooted.

"I am ignorant, monsieur, in the knowledge you ascribe to me, but I sometimes, not always, feel a knowledge of my own.” Lucy Snowe and Seneca would have made perfect friends. Her stoicism and her eloquence both live up to Seneca’s standard.

"There was about Dr. John all the man of the world; to satisfy himself did not suffice; society must approve—the world must admire what he did, or he counted his measures false and futile.” On the cusp of being a pessimist today: methinks that it’s people like Dr. John, not Mme Beck, who make this world a lonely place for all the Lucy Snowes.

Is Madame Beck a witch, or a fairy godmother in disguise!? This chapter is taking a turn more toward the evil fairytale.

Yesterday and today’s chapter asks M. Paul the same question as Miss Fanshawe asks Lucy Snowe a few chapters ago—who are you? A question deeply connected to livelihood. The two characters facing this question both have to strive to make a living…

"...a small spanieless (if one may coin a word)...” A spaniel is not enough to describe the cute little dog; a spanieless it must be. (It reminds me that two friends both sternly demanded that I remove the word “poetess” from a manuscript once).

A chapter titled “Sunshine” is an outlier in this novel: bright happiness of ever after is granted to two minor characters, whose love story is sweet; perhaps a bit predictable; far from being memorable. And yet not all love stories have to be memorable.

A chapter titled “Cloud” follows the chapter “Sunshine.” After a fairytale of ever after we enter the enchanted dark forest. The febrile scene at the midnight fête is rather disturbing, even when a reader is not drugged.

What I love about the family junta is that M. Paul doesn’t seem to be an easily manipulatable person, and yet the Père Silas, Mme Beck and Mme Walravens still manage to scheme, more or less successfully. A superior mind begets superior manipulators.

The penultimate chapter is where a fairytale ends. It is a fairytale in itself. And yet, and yet, a novel like VILLETTE cannot end with a fairytale.