Villette (Dramatic Reading)

After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance.

By : Charlotte Brontë (1816 - 1855)

Dramatis Personae



Chapter 01



Chapter 02



Chapter 03



Chapter 04



Chapter 05



Chapter 06



Chapter 07



Chapter 08



Chapter 09



Chapter 10



Chapter 11



Chapter 12



Chapter 13



Chapter 14



Chapter 15



Chapter 16



Chapter 17



Chapter 18



Chapter 19



Chapter 20



Chapter 21



Chapter 22



Chapter 23



Chapter 24



Chapter 25



Chapter 26



Chapter 27



Chapter 28



Chapter 29



Chapter 30



Chapter 31



Chapter 32



Chapter 33



Chapter 34



Chapter 35



Chapter 36



Chapter 37



Chapter 38



Chapter 39



Chapter 40



Chapter 41



Chapter 42


Villette begins with its famously passive protagonist, Lucy Snowe, age 14, staying at the home of her godmother Mrs. Bretton in "the clean and ancient town of Bretton", in England. Also in residence are Mrs. Bretton's son, John Graham Bretton (whom the family calls Graham), and a young visitor, Paulina Home (who is called Polly). Polly is a peculiar little girl who soon develops a deep devotion to Graham, who showers her with attention. But Polly's visit is cut short when her father writes to summon her to live with him abroad.

For reasons that are not stated, Lucy leaves Mrs. Bretton's home a few weeks after Polly's departure. Some years pass, during which an unspecified family tragedy leaves Lucy without family, home, or means. After some initial hesitation, she is hired as a caregiver by Miss Marchmont, a rheumatic crippled woman. Lucy is soon accustomed to her work and has begun to feel content with her quiet lifestyle.

During an evening of dramatic weather changes, Miss Marchmont regains all her energy and feels young again. She shares with Lucy her sad love story of 30 years previously, 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 dead.

Lucy then leaves the English countryside and goes to London. At the age of 23, she boards a ship for Labassecour (Belgium) despite knowing very little French. She travels to the city of Villette, where she finds employment as a bonne (nanny) at Mme. Beck's boarding school for girls. (This school is seen as being based upon the Hégers' Brussels pensionnat). After a time, she is hired to teach English at the school, in addition to having to mind Mme. Beck's three children. She thrives despite Mme. Beck's constant surveillance of the staff and students.

"Dr. John," a handsome English doctor, frequently visits the school because of his love for the coquette Ginevra Fanshawe. In one of Villette's famous plot twists, "Dr. John" is later revealed to be John Graham Bretton, a fact that Lucy has known but has deliberately concealed from the reader. After Dr. John (i.e., Graham) discovers Ginevra's unworthiness, he turns his attention to Lucy, and they become close friends. She values this friendship highly despite her usual emotional reserve.

We meet Polly (Paulina Home) again at this point; her father has inherited the title "de Bassompierre" and is now a Count. Thus her name is now Paulina Home de Bassompierre. Polly and Graham soon discover that they knew each other in the past and renew their friendship. They fall in love and eventually marry.

Lucy becomes progressively closer to a colleague, the irascible, autocratic, and male chauvinist professor, M. Paul Emanuel, a relative of Mme. Beck. Lucy and Paul eventually fall in love.

However, a group of conspiring antagonists, including Mme. Beck, the priest Père Silas, and the relatives of M. Paul's long-dead fiancée, work to keep the two apart, on the grounds that a union between a catholic and a protestant is impossible. They finally succeed in forcing M. Paul's departure for the West Indies to oversee a plantation there. He nonetheless declares his love for Lucy before his departure and arranges for her to live independently as the headmistress of her own day school, which she later expands into a pensionnat (boarding school).

During the course of the novel, Lucy has three encounters with the figure of a nun — which may be the ghost of a nun who was buried alive on the school's grounds as punishment for breaking her vow of chastity. In a highly symbolic scene near the end of the novel, she discovers the "nun's" habit in her bed and destroys it. She later finds out that it was a disguise worn by Ginevra's amour, Alfred de Hamal. The episodes with the nun no doubt contributed substantially to the novel's reputation as a gothic novel.

Villette's final pages are ambiguous. Although Lucy says that she wants to leave the reader free to imagine a happy ending, she hints strongly that M. Paul's ship was destroyed by a storm during his return journey from the West Indies. She says that, "M. Emanuel was away three years. Reader, they were the three happiest years of my life." This passage suggests that he was drowned by the "destroying angel of tempest."

Brontë described the ambiguity of the ending as a "little puzzle" (quoted in Chapter XII of part 2 of Gaskell's Life).

Comments

Random Post

  • Here and Hereafter
    15.11.2020 - 0 Comments
    This is a collection of stories by Barry Pain. While not all of these fall squarely into the genre of ghost…
  • Lạc đà và khỉ đi ăn trộm - truyện cổ tích
    23.10.2023 - 0 Comments
    Trên một cù lao nhỏ ở giữa sông, có một con khỉ và một con lạc đà kết bạn với nhau. Ngày ngày, chúng rủ nhau…
  • Around the World in Seventy-Two Days
    11.02.2020 - 0 Comments
    This is a true account by American woman journalist who, in 1889, set out to see whether she could beat the…
  • Ben, The Luggage Boy
    18.04.2020 - 0 Comments
    Ben, after running away from home, must find a way to survive on the streets. According to the preface, the…
  • Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases
    19.11.2018 - 0 Comments
    A Practical Handbook of Pertinent Expressions, Striking Similes, Literary, Commercial, Conversational, and…
  • Love Songs
    13.01.2021 - 0 Comments
    This is a collection of love songs by Canadian-born Floridian Poet Laureate George Graham Currie. As poetry…
  • The Legends and Myths of Hawaii
    08.12.2020 - 0 Comments
    A collection of legends and myths of the Hawaiian islands and their 'strange people' as told by His Majesty…
  • La Condenada y Otros Cuentos
    03.08.2019 - 0 Comments
    Coleccion de cuentos de Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez fue un periodista, político y…
  • Người thợ đúc và anh học nghề - truyện cổ tích việt nam
    23.10.2023 - 0 Comments
    Xưa có đức thánh Khổng Lồ, chuyên trông nom về nghề đúc và nghề rèn ở hạ giới. Đức thánh thường thân hành đi…
  • Carpenter's World Travels. France to Scandinavia
    08.09.2020 - 0 Comments
    A travelogue through the countries of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden for young and old…
  • Glimpses of Bengal
    09.12.2020 - 0 Comments
    The book is a selection of letters written by Tagore, in various places in Bengal, India.By…
  • Người giữ khoá | Chương 4 | Harry Potter và Hòn đá Phù thủy | Tập 1
    09.10.2023 - 0 Comments
    Đó là một người có vóc dáng khổng lồ, đã phá sập cánh cửa để vào. Người khổng lồ tên là Rubeus Hagrid đến để…
  • The Soul of Man
    28.03.2020 - 0 Comments
    The Soul of Man under Socialism is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds a libertarian…
  • Nada the Lily
    10.08.2020 - 0 Comments
    A classic tale of love and revenge set in the Zulu Kingdom of present-day KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. A…
  • Agnes Sorel
    29.06.2021 - 0 Comments
    The Hundred Years' War: a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of…
  • A Hypocritical Romance, and Other Stories
    15.11.2020 - 0 Comments
    This is a collection of twelve original and entertaining little romances. Literature is an important anchor…