Villette (Penguin Classics)

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Perhaps with slips of him you might light an occasional cigar—or you might remember to lose him some day—and a Cornhill functionary would gather him up and consign him to the repositories of waste paper, and thus he would prematurely find his way to the ‘butterman’ and trunkmakers.

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.”

Did she really understand so little of what she had done? For of all criticisms that can be applied to it, none has so little relation to Villette as a criticism that goes by negatives. It is the most assertive, the most challenging of books. After the various visits and excitements of the summer Charlotte tried to make progress with the new story, during the loneliness of the autumn at Haworth. But Haworth in those days seems to have been a poisoned place. A kind of low fever—influenza—feverish cold—were the constant plagues of the parsonage and its inmates.

Tenderness, faith, treason, loneliness, parting, yearning, the fusion of heart with heart and soul with soul, the ineffable illumination that love can give to common things and humble lives,—these, after all, are the perennially interesting things in life; and here the women-novelists are at no disadvantage. As to Paul Emanuel, we need not repeat all that Mr. Swinburne has said; but we need not try to question, either, his place among the immortals: Villette itself, in portions that are clearly autobiographical, bears curious testimony to the French reading, which stirred and liberated Charlotte’s genius, as Hofmann’s tales gave spur and impetus to Emily. It was a fortunate chance that thus brought to bear upon her at a critical moment a force so strong and kindred, a force starting from a Celt like herself, from the Breton Chateaubriand. Two more friends from Lucy's childhood, Paulina Home and her father, now live in Villette. Mr. Home has inherited a title and a fortune, and he and his daughter live in fine style. Paulina ( Polly), who is younger than both Dr. John and Lucy, stayed with the Brettons when a young child and formed an interestingly adult attachment to Dr. John. Dr. John, who was enamored of Polly's flighty cousin Ginevra, now transfers his affections to the seventeen-year-old. Villette begins with its protagonist and unreliable narrator, Lucy Snowe, aged 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 teenaged son, John Graham Bretton (whom the family calls Graham), and a young visitor, Paulina Home (who is called Polly), who is aged 6. Polly's mother, who neglected her daughter, has recently died and her father is recommended by doctors to travel to improve his spirits. Polly is invited by Mrs. Bretton to stay. Polly is a serious little girl, who is described as unlike normal children.Buzard, James. 2005. Disorienting fiction: The autoethnographic work of nineteenth-century British novels. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Machuca, Daniela (July 2007), "My own still shadow-world": melancholy and feminine intermediacy in Charlotte Brontë's Villette, eCommons@USASK . Although only two copies of the collection of poems were sold, the sisters continued writing for publication and began their first novels, continuing to use their noms de plume when sending manuscripts to potential publishers. Polly Home/Countess Paulina Mary de Bassompierre: A 17-year-old English girl who is a cousin of Ginevra Fanshawe. She is first introduced to the story as a very young girl, who is called Polly. As a child, she was very fond of Graham Bretton. She grows to be a beautiful young lady who is delicate and intelligent. Upon meeting Graham again, their friendship develops into love, and they eventually marry. Lucy says of her, "She looked a mere doll," and describes her as shaped like "a model." She and Lucy are friends. Although Lucy is often pained by Polly's relationship with Graham, she looks upon their happiness without a grudge. Lyndall Gordon stated that Charlotte’s novels all represent Charlotte’s struggle to balance Reason and Passion, while not becoming overcome by either. After reading that, I saw how true it was in Jane Eyre and I watched for it in Villette. Sure enough, it was there.

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because– without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine"– we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise. [23]Towards the end of 1850, or in the first days of 1851, she wrote a fresh preface to The Professor, and suggested to her publishers that they should at last venture upon its publication. Brontë's first manuscript, 'The Professor', did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response from Smith, Elder & Co. of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works Currer Bell might wish to send. [24] Brontë responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August 1847. Six weeks later, Jane Eyre was published. It tells the story of a plain governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining Romanticism, naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective. [25] Brontë believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed the experience into a novel with universal appeal. [26]

Charlotte Brontë was the last to die of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting. [a] Early years and education [ edit ]

VILLETTE.

But though she is Jane Eyre over again there are differences, and all, it seems to me, to Lucy’s advantage. She is far more intelligible—truer to life and feeling. Morbid she is often; but Lucy Snows so placed, and so gifted, must have been morbid.