Villette by Charlotte Brontë

I found this my third attempt at Villette considerably easier going after reading Jane Eyre. Things start slowly but the tale gathers momentum once we reach the city of the title, and whilst the story never reaches the Gothic heights of its more famous sibling, it has own more subtle appeal that many readers will find preferable. The main attraction is the narrator, Lucy Snowe, a more interesting character than Jane Eyre, sharper and less idealised, occasionally given to vicious sarcasm and very single-minded. Villette is reputedly semi-autobiographical, and if the narrator’s character reflects the author’s then it must have been a rewarding and entertaining experience to incur her displeasure. One imagines afternoon tea punctuated by pithy remarks scathing enough to curdle the currant buns.

M. Paul Emmanuel is the other main point of interest. Although he starts out unappealing, a caricature of a 19th century foreign intellectual, he develops pleasingly into a sort of low-key hero. He is no Rochester, and has to work hard to earn admiration of both Lucy and the reader, but this makes him more interesting in the end. One of his main functions is to serve as a representative of continental religiosity, enabling the discussion of that favourite Victorian topic “Those Ghastly Catholics”. Brontë almost allows her heroine to move beyond the Catholic/Protestant division, but prevents it at the last moment. It feels like the author tried her best to overcome her prejudices, and got most of the way there by humanising a detestable papist, but could not bring herself to permit her characters to finally consummate their pairing by getting married and living happily ever after. M. Paul is a very selfless, and self-denying Catholic, given over to the practical application of a rather puritanical set of beliefs, as contrasted with his meddling relative Madame Beck and the priest Père Silas, who are devotees of the ritualism that characterised the traditional English view of the Roman faith, but even his very protestant Catholicism is too much of an obstacle to a union with a true Anglican, and at the final moment God himself intervenes to prevent the unthinkable, in the guise of a terrible storm. It’s a complete cop out of an ending, but perhaps it was unavoidable given the prevailing views of the establishment at the time.

2 comments 2008-03-20 19:09 Categories: Books, Reviews