Skip to main content

Discussion on Villette

This is to me not like Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre is dramatic and melancholy, a true period romance, while Villette contains too many little heartbreaks and no large ones that would constitute a romance.

Lucy's wild delirium of loneliness is the most emotional interval I have read in the story. In this she reveals fully the passions that lie beneath her cool exterior. Soon after we learn that she has closed even the reader off in some information, such a private person she is, and she has returned to her cool reserve.

She describes in painful yet analytical detail what it is like to make a living as a woman, and even more interestingly, in a woman-dominated work. As a reader I identify, I recognize, I rage. As a working woman I feel I am looking into a mirror, examining a world nearly two centuries ago full of the same kinds of people in this one.

Two older matriarchs dominate Lucy's life, and are remarkably similar to each other. One is genteel, the other dishonest and underhanded, but both dote on the same spoiled young man, the son of Lucy's godmother, the one, and the doctor of her employer, Madame Beck. There is nothing really wrong with John Graham, but I find myself disliking him, as I dislike nearly all of the other characters. There is no warmth in them, and I'm sure that's very deliberate on Bronte's part to set a stage, and yet it's remarkably similar to real life.

There is one character who has warmth, another teacher, M. Paul, who has brought color and excitement into Lucy's life by putting her in hot water numerous times. He is the only character who can bring her flashing temper to the surface.

Popular posts from this blog

The secret to a happy home

I finished Marion Harland's guide tonight and I wonder ceaselessly at two things. 1. She is so down on America! Even more than I am. She complains of things in which I am so well-steeped I could not see them for what they were. In particular, American style and cookery. It is true that our food, which we count as so much more generous in portion than the overseas counterpart, is as coarse and indecorous as it is plentiful, but as an American woman I cast up my hands and declare I would rather spend my time on something else. She makes an interesting point about American women's fashions. In France women wear what looks good on them, and in America women wears what comes off the manufacturing line in the latest style. It is very conformist, and I have to admit I feel it in myself, for I would be embarrassed to wear something that is "out" even if it flattered me better. 2. Harland's other point I feel clearly from last night's experiences. I looked in my journ...

Helen Keller

Reading this Women of Influence book is causing me to remember another of my great childhood loves -- "The Miracle Worker," the story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. It was Anne Sullivan I really loved, and still love -- it always made me heartsick to think of her sacrifice, devoting every waking minute to another human being, with almost no life left to herself, until she died in old age, and Helen Keller required another translator. But God -- she must have known it -- that's the best way to live -- it is to have every moment of your life swallowed in supreme goodness and satisfaction. No wonder I loved her, and no longer do I feel sorry for her -- I envy her. I thought of her today perhaps because when I was around eight or nine I grew aware that she and I shared the same initials "AS." Today is the first day that I am Amanda Monteleone at work, and I have written my initials "AM" dozens of times already. It's strange, but the satisfaction of...

Sprouts

Sprouts Originally uploaded by ladyhildegarde . I am getting sprouts. Hopefully they are carnations. It is such a beautiful spring day. It's good I'm taking the chance to come outside: I have craved a moment to reflect on something beautiful.