"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 36 to end

Last post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.

To see all the posts, click on "Villette read a long" in the right hand bar. 

NOTE: all posts include spoilers








As I was reading these last chapters, I felt so sorry for Lucy.  Is she cursed in relationships?  Just when she was opening up her heart to M. Paul, when "affection and deep esteem and dawning trust had each fastened its bond", she found out from Madame Beck that he was leaving the school for an indefinite time.  This news was even more painful because just ten days prior, he took her hand and "through his touch, and with his words, a new feeling and a strange thought found a course.  Could it be that he was becoming more than friend or brother?  Did his look speak a kindness beyond fraternity or amity?"

To make matters worse, she received no word or visit from him.  And on the day he came to the school to bid farewell, Lucy allowed Madame Beck to manipulate her into not seeing him.  What a silly girl to allow this to happen!  Although Lucy could be headstrong, tough and determined, at other times, as Madame Beck knew, she was completely the opposite.

"She knew my weakness and deficiency; she could calculate the degree of moral paralysis - the total default of self-assertion - with which in a crisis, I could be struck."

Lucy figured out one of Madame Beck's secrets - that she wanted to marry M. Paul.

"Deep into some of Madame's secrets I had entered - I know not how; by an intuition or an inspiration which came to me - I know not whence. In the course of living with her, too, I had slowly learned, that, unless with an inferior, she must ever be a rival.  She was my rival, heart and soul, though secretly, under the smoothest bearing, and utterly unknown to all save her and myself."

Lucy also deduced that the "three self-seekers" as she called them; Madame Beck, Madame Walravens and Pere Silas had conspired to send M. Paul to Guadaloupe to manage M. Walraven's estate.

She comes to believe the M. Paul is to marry Justine Marie Sauveur "and then - something tore me so cruelly under my shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt jealousy till now."  Poor, poor Lucy.

Fast forward to the end - M. Paul does love Lucy!  And shows this by setting up a home/school for her.  A place for her to wait for his return and while doing so, to work for herself.

"Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth."

These words must have fallen so sweetly on her ears and after lodging in her heart, filled her with inexpressible joy.

Three years passed and then while on his way home to her, a seven day storm on the Atlantic left wrecks in its wake.  Was M. Paul one of them?  The end does not make it clear, but I would guess yes.

Lucy is a survivor.  And a realist and pragmatist.  I don't think she withered away in grief and melancholy.  Rather, she probably found great comfort having been loved by M. Paul for three years, the happiest in her life.  I don't think she would have traded this for anything.  In fact, her words before he set sail, never to be seen again, only heard from in precious letters, is how, I think, she feels until the time they are united in death.

"He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to have spread over me its beam like a banner.  Once - unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the manner, displeased me.  Now, penetrated with his influence, and living by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by heart - I preferred him before all humanity."

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 31 - 35

Seventh post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.

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NOTE: all posts include spoilers








Coming down the home stretch of my first structured "read-a-long."  Reading the assigned 5 chapters a week allowed plenty of time for reflection, hypothesizing and writing.  Not how I usually read a book.

As a reader, I have wondered (and worried) about Lucy: her past, what will come of her, will she find true love, etc.  A number of questions have been answered in this section.  Not really the way I expected.

1) Regarding her feelings for Dr. Graham: Lucy admits that she likes Polly and she knows that he likes her too.  By these words she blesses their match: "You must be united.  I knew the first day I saw you together at La Terrasse.  In all that mutually concerns you and Graham there seems to me promise, plan, harmony."  Lucy seems genuinely happy at their union; there is not a hint of jealousy, regret or bitterness.

2) Her feeling about M. Paul are so conflicted.  There is a point where she knew he was seeking her and instead of staying put, she fled!  Even she did not understand why. "I felt from the first it was me he wanted - me he was seeking - and had not I wanted him too?  What, then, had carried me away?  What had rapt me beyond his reach?"  Lucy, Lucy - still a study in contradictions!

3) Lucy finds out about M. Paul's true love, a deceased woman named Justine Marie while on an errand for Madame Beck to deliver fruit basket.  After listening to a story by the same priest who took her confession many chapters ago (how convenient), Lucy now calls M. Paul her "Christian hero" and one who is "half-knight" or "half-saint".

4) Is sibling love all that will be between M. Paul and Lucy?  A platonic, devoted but virtuous love?  It seems so and Lucy is content.  "I envied no girl her lover, no bride her bridegroom, no wife her husband; I was content with this my voluntary, self-offering friend.  If he would but prove reliable, and he looked reliable, what, beyond his friendship, could I ever covet?"

It appears loose ends are wrapping up nicely, albeit not as expected as Lucy may not find true love after all.  There are six chapters left - what could possible happen?  The title of the next chapter, The Apple of Discord, seems ominous.

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 26 - 30

Fifth post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.

To see all the posts, click on "Villette read a long" in the right hand bar. 

NOTE: all posts include spoilers







The title of Chapter 26 is "A Burial".  I began reading wondering who had died.  Lo and behold, Lucy was talking about burying letters from Dr. John!   But not just her letters.....

"But I was not only going to hide a treasure - I meant also to bury a grief. That grief over which I had lately been weeping, as I wrapped it in its winding sheet, must be interred."

As one who has been truly grieving for the past two years over the death of my 17 year old son, this seems so trivial and trite.  Give me a break, Lucy!

It is interesting that in this same chapter, Lucy give us an idea of how others view her.  Since this is coming from her, rather than an omniscient narrator, how reliable is it?  What if I put to pen what others thought of me?

"Madame Beck esteemed me learned and blue; Miss Fanshawe, caustic, ironic and cynical; Mr Home, a model teacher, the essence of the sedate and discreet...while another person, Professor Paul Emanuel, to wit, never lost an opportunity of intimating his opinion that mine was rather a fiery and rash nature - adventurous, indocile, and audacious."

Regardless, it FINALLY has given me a glimpse of Lucy - like a mirror reflecting her character.  Nothing is surprising as she is all of these things.

Fast forward - it has been three months since Dr. John has spoken to her, "a lapse of which he was not even conscious."  So his letters and her grief are well buried.

The last three chapters focus on M. Paul and curious interactions between he and Lucy.  Reminiscent of 13 year old, immature adolescent kids - trying to figure out if they like each other.  Not sure if I like M. Paul - he seems so extreme in nature, but maybe is the the perfect fit for Lucy.  Or maybe she is the perfect fit for him.

The plot is picking up so am eager to see what will happen to these characters.

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 23-25

Fifth post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.

To see all the posts, click on "Villette read a long" in the right hand bar. 

NOTE: all posts include spoilers.








This post is on three chapters which will get me in line with our reading schedule.  And an interesting three chapters they are!

Finally, Polly enters the picture.  The daughter of a Count, she is young, beautiful, sweet and refined.  Having lived a privileged life in the constant care of her loving father, it strikes me how opposite her life is to Lucy's.

So a stranger has come to town (master plot).  But not a real stranger, in fact, this is more like a reunion.  Those who were together at the beginning of the story are keeping company again.  Dr. John has for the second time, rescued the "damsel in distress".  He brought Lucy to his home after her breakdown in the street and he is the one to carry Polly out of the theatre and the threat of fire.  Hmmmm - a bit of a pattern here?

I have said "poor Lucy" to myself numerous times throughout the book and I said it again - out loud - while reading about the seven weeks without any letter, word, or visit from Dr. John.  Lucy's description:

"I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily fed as to be always upon the verge of famine, await their food as I awaited a letter."

In another passage, she likens it to being in solitary confinement or being a "long buried prisoner".  This is how it was for her to have no word from Dr. John.  How sad.  What might have been opaque is now crystal clear - Lucy is attached to Dr. John and this separation nearly drove her mad.

My questions now:

• Dr John seems enamored by Polly and she with him.  Is something going to develop between them, right under Lucy's nose? 
• What is going to happen to our poor heroine?   

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 13 - 22

Fourth post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.

To see all the posts, click on "Villette read a long" in the right hand bar. 

NOTE: all posts include spoilers.







I am continuing to enjoy this book in which Bronte has created in Lucy, a complex and interesting character.  I have recently finished listening to the audiocourse, Art of Reading,  and am using Villette as a vehicle to practice the newly learned tools.

In the course, Professor Spurgin suggests writing down the chapter numbers and next to each, noting the entrance/exit of a main character, any changes in setting, if there is a destabalizing event, etc to determine if a pattern exists.  As I look back over the chapters, there is something significant that happens in every one.  For example, the changes to setting are numerous: the Bretton home, leaving for 8 years (where does she go?), London, boat to France, Villette, Rue Fossette, La Terrasse, art gallery, concert hall, back to Rue Fossette.  The list is longer if the places within Rue Fossette are noted: classroom, garden, alley, attic, fete, etc.

In last week's post, I wrote of the contradictions within Lucy's character.  Turns out, she is not the only one.

"The reader is requested to note a seemingly contradiction in the two views which have been given of Graham Bretton - the public and private - the out-door and the in-door view. In the first, the public, he is shown oblivious of self; as modest in the display of his energies, as earnest in their exercise.  In the second, the fireside picture, there is expressed consciousness of what he has and what he is; pleasure in homage, some recklessness in exciting, some vanity in receiving the same.  Both portraits are correct."

Lucy observes and notes the discrepancies, idiosyncrasies and nuance contradictions in the people around her.  I also find this idea of a "public and private" face or an "out-door and in-door"  view of a person thought-provoking.  Isn't this true of most people?  Of me?  Is this part of human nature to show different sides of ourselves in different situations?  And as Lucy says, all sides or "portraits" shown are correct?  And therefore, to really know someone, you must see both public and private life.  The only way for Lucy to have seen the "private" face of Dr. Bretton was to end up in his home.

Another thought from the Art of Reading.  Prof. Spurgin talks about looking for the conflicts either outside or within the main character by asking questions like: what do they want?  If the conflict is outside of the character what are the external obstacles to obtaining what they want?  And if the conflict is within the character, this question is a good one:  Do they want what they shouldn't want?  And how do they deal with this?

Lucy struggles with internal conflict.  She wants Dr. Graham but doesn't want to want him.  This inner fight shows up in the passage where she talks to the part of herself called "Reason".  They argue about Lucy's response in the event Dr. Bretton should write as promised.  Reason is harsh, unrelenting and downright horrible.

"This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down.  According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond."

So the questions I have after finishing this section are:

• Is there going to be a love triangle? Two men are in Lucy's life now: Dr. Graham Bretton and M. Paul Emanuel. She is drawn to one who appears to view her only as a close friend while the other shows interest in her, but she finds him annoying.
• What does Dr. Bretton think of Lucy?  Who will he love, if not Ginerva?
• Why the conversation with "Reason?"  Why is she so harsh?
• It feels like Lucy has a secret.  What is it?  Who is she?  Where did she come from?  These questions remain unanswered and I am beginning to wonder if they ever will be.

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 12-17

Third post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.

I am enjoying the book thus far as we have made our way into Volume Two.  But am feeling a bit frustrated that Lucy is not more forthcoming about her past.  I have the same questions as last week:  Where did she come from?   Who is her family?
What happened to her?   Why is she all alone?

She is a mystery, an enigma, hiding the details of her past while dropping hints which for me, only brings up more questions.  Hence the frustration.  Anyone else feeling this?




In the audiocourse, The Art of Reading, Professor Spurgin talks about the difference between flat and round characters from E.M. Forster's Book, Aspects of the Novel.  Round characters are "dynamic, complex, and unpredictable" and are therefore far more interesting than flat characters who are predictable, one-dimensional and boring.  Lucy Snowe is definitely a round character.  I find her to be a study in contradictions as the next three examples show.

1)  On the one hand, she is unambitious and a wall-flower, perfectly content to settle for a "ho-hum" kind of life.  Back in Chapter 8, she says: "Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the hornbook..."

And yet when faced with a challenge, be it teaching a large group of students for the first time, or at the very last minute, taking a major part in a play, she finds the resources to do so and with success.

2)  She comes across as a stoic, cool, aloof person and yet underneath, has deep, intense feelings.  At times, like a bubbling pot of water that overflows, her emotions get the best of her.  She feels anger, bitterness, loneliness, fear, and anxiety.  Once the emotional outburst is over, she puts a lid back on her feelings as shown in this passage:

"Yet as the laugh died, a kind of wrath smote me, and then bitterness followed....I cried hot tears...complicated, disquieting thoughts broke up the whole repose of my nature. However, that turmoil subsided: next day I was again Lucy Stowe."

3)  When the school is full of people, she separates herself, preferring to live in her "own still, shadow-world."  Another example of this is when, after performing in the fete, she "retired into myself and my ordinary life.....Withdrawing to a quiet nook, whence unobserved I could observe - the ball, its splendours and its pleasures passed before me as a spectacle."

Yet when everyone leaves for vacation, her reaction is surprising.  One would think she would enjoy the emptiness, stillness and quiet.  But no, quite the contrary.  She ends up having an emotional breakdown, she is so distraught.

"My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords. How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless! How vast and void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the forsaken garden - gray now with the dust of the town-summer departed....I hardly knew how I was to live to the end."

Lucy is not only full of contradictions, but is full of secrets.  Secrets of her past that she refuses to disclose to us readers.  She keeps things from others such as when she knew who Dr. John really was. Why would she keep this to herself?  Why not disclose who she was and renew a relationship with not only him but his mother?   Her motive is unclear which I find disconcerting.

So Lucy is not only full of contradictions and secrets but also fear.  Fear of intimacy.  Fear of rejection. Fear of loving and being hurt.  These are my guesses based on how she reacts to the care and kindness from Dr. John and his mother.

"I left that I still had friends...towards whom, my heart softened instinctively and yearned with an importunate gratitude, which I entreated Reason betimes to check. 'Do not let me not think of them too often, too much, too fondly...let me be content with a temperate draught of this living stream...still repeating it, I steeped that pillow with tears."

Despite being left in the dark, I am still interested in Lucy.  I want to know what happens to her. Will these contradictions in her personality get resolved?  Will she find happiness?  What about love?

I love Bronte's use of language and am now considering how and where to keep a running list of memorable quotes of this and future books.  Anyone else doing this and if so, how?

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 6 - 11

Second post for this read-a-long, initiated by Unputdownables.


I am writing this on the Sunday prior to Thursday's posting deadline as I can't help but want to read ahead.  Before doing so however, I need to stop and write for fear that knowing more of the story will influence this post.  This is a new exercise - to stop in the middle of reading, think deeply about what's been read and write.  Depending on how this goes, who knows - a new habit may begin!

In chapters 6 - 11, we read about Lucy Snowe 's move from London to France, more specifically a town called Villette.  As an impoverished, single woman with no family or friends (as far as we know), she has only herself to rely upon.  I find her decision-making process haunting.

"I had nothing to lose.  Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past forbade return.  If I failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer?  If I died far away from - home, I was going to say, but I had no home - from England, then, who would weep?  I might suffer; I was inured to suffering: death itself had not, I thought, those terrors for me which it has for the softly reared.  I had, ere this, looked on the thought of death with a quiet eye.  Prepared then, for any consequence, I formed a project." 

Any other woman, including myself, might have been in the throes of depression if this were her life.  No home, no family, no one who would weep if she died.  A woman familiar with suffering, one not "softly reared" nor afraid of death. It is this lack of fear that gives her the courage to sail to a different country and attempt to find work.  On this trip, when events occur that would frighten many, she gives cool appraisal to herself.

"I asked myself if I was wretched or terrified.  I was neither.  Often in my life have I been far more so under comparatively safe circumstances.  'How is this?' said I.  'Me-thinks I am animated and alert, instead of being depressed and apprehensive?' I would not tell how it was."

She assesses her situation again, once safely bunked.

"Some difficulties had been passed through, a sort of victory was won: my homeless, anchorless, unsupported mind had again leisure for a brief repose: till the 'Vivid' arrived in harbour, no further action would be required of me, but then..Oh!  I could not look forward.  Harassed, exhausted, I lay in a half-trance."

The words she uses to describe her mind, in fact, aptly portray her current state:  homeless, anchorless, unsupported.  "Poor thing," I think.  But she has no self-pity - in fact, as she later stands on the ship's deck alone, she feels happy and confident that as long as she has health and a stable mind, Hope is not far.

"..so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star."

A fellow passenger, Miss Ginevra Fanshawe, tells Lucy of a position as an English governess for Madame Beck, directress of her school.  Lucy decides that she will pursue this opportunity and in anticipation of the reader having issue with the decision, she says:

"Before you pronounce on the rashness of the proceeding, reader, look back to the point whence I started; consider the desert I had left, note how little I perilled: mine was the game where the player cannot lose and may win."

With this passage, it is clear we are reading about Lucy Snowe's accounting of her life - her memoir.  And while writing, she presumes judgements made by the reader and attempts to dispel them or at least, to justify her actions.  On her trip to Villette, she describes her mounting anxiety like a tiger.  I find this analogy haunting and horrible. She is someone who is close to being victimized and perhaps devoured by anxiety.

"These feelings, however, were well kept in check by the secret but ceaseless consciousness of anxiety lying in wait on enjoyment, like a tiger crouched in a jungle. The breathing of that beast of prey was in my ear always, his fierce heart panted close against mine; he never stirred in his lair but I felt him: I knew he waited only for sun-down to bound ravenous from his ambush."

With fate guiding her, Lucy manages to not only find Madame Beck, but is hired first as governess, then as an English teacher.  Her description of M. Beck is riveting:

"..to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It proved to her that she had no heart to be touched: it reminded her where she was impotent and dead. Never was the distinction between charity and mercy better exemplified than in her....In philanthropic schemes, for the benefit of society at large, she took a cheerful part; no private sorrow touched her: no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart had power to pierce hers.  Not the agony in Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung from her eyes one tear."

Upon hearing that Madame Beck wants her to take over an English class from a departing teacher, she is mortified as it would mean leaving her "comfort zone."  Her reasoning to settle for an unobtrusive and uninteresting life is this:

"...my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know.  Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter."

This passage really hit me.  She has suffered.  Even severely.  I have as well, with the tragic death of our son.  And with that horrific event, went all feelings of happiness, either for present or for the future. And so Lucy's thought - that happiness would simply be the absence of severe suffering rings true for me.

I am surprised at the number of interesting quotes in these 6 chapters.  Will the rest of the book be this way?

What I am learning about Lucy:

• she is self-reflective, assessing her thoughts and feelings as honestly as possible. 
• she is an observer - like a fly on the wall.
• she is quiet which makes her unnoticeable, in the case of young Dr. John. To others like Miss Fanshawe, she is a good listener. 
• when push comes to shove, she is quite resourceful.  Eg. obtaining employment from Madame Beck, handling a class of 60 testy students - with no support, whatsoever. 

Questions about Lucy:

• Where did she come from?  Who is her family?  What happened to her?  How did she come to be in such a desperate situation? Will we ever learn about her past?
• She seems to just "go with the flow."  What else will happen to her?  Is there any happiness in her future? 

"Villette" Read-A-Long: Chapters 1-5

While perusing through various book blogs today, I came across the Villette read-a-long, hosted by Unputdownables.  I was instantly intrigued because in a recently read book by Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, she wrote about the haunting nature of Charlotte Bronte's story.

I didn't think much of it, but then as the evening wore on, I kept thinking about how nice it would be to read this book along with others.  So thanks to the ability to download the book onto my Nook at 9:30pm, here I am.

I know absolutely nothing about the story and honestly after reading quick 5 chapters, I still do not know very much.  I am curious about Lucy Snowe.  Who is she?  Why is she on her own?  Why, when we are first getting to know her, as an established guest at Mrs. Bretton's home does she take a back seat to a tiny, precocious and utterly strange six-year old girl?  She appears to be like a fly on the wall.  An observer, not a partaker.

Several years pass and we find her desperate for money and therefore needing to work.  Which she does, caring for an invalid woman, Miss Marchmont,who unfortunately dies before making good on her promise to bestow some financial gift to poor Lucy.  I found the following quote, which was also quoted in Corrigan's book to be more than just sad - it was stifling and claustrophobic.

"Her service was my duty - her pain, my suffering - her relief, my hope - her anger, my punishment - her regard, my reward.  I forgot that there were fields, woods, rivers, seas, an ever-changing sky outside the steam-dimmed lattice of this sick chamber."

In her own words, Lucy would have "crawled on with her for twenty years..."  Lucky (or maybe unlucky, depending on what happens) for her, upon the death of her ward/employer, she has to move on.

Bronte has pulled me in.  I want to know what happens to this poor girl.

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