(no subject)

[skygiants]

I read Charlotte Bronte's >Villette for the first time last week. I don't know why I didn't anticipate how wildly entertaining I would find it, given how much I love Jane Eyre, but in fact it was a delightful surprise which I did not anticipate at all.

Also, there ... are gayer nineteenth-century novels? But NOT MANY.


Villette is narrated by Lucy Snowe, a quiet and responsible young woman with hobbies that include staring creepily at the people around her, stuffing her own expectations into a tiny box labeled 'REALISTIC', and being an incredibly weird and unreliable narrator.

Due to an unspecified catastrophe, Lucy finds herself nearly penniless and short on options. In her one great risk-taking adventure of her life, she decides she's going to blow all her remaining cash on a trip across the Channel on the off-chance someone in France needs an English governess.

It turns out, someone in France does need an English teacher! Her name is Madame Beck and she runs a school...with CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE AND ESPIONAGE.

Lucy Snowe takes the fact that someone is constantly searching through her stuff and reading her letters pretty much in stride.

LUCY SNOWE: Had she creased one solitary article [while secretly searching my possessions], I own I should have felt much greater difficulty in forgiving her; but finding all straight and orderly, I said, 'Let bygones be bygones.'

Lucy does not exactly approve of the police-state school system, but nonetheless she spends paragraphs waxing rhapsodic about how great and capable Madame Beck is and how her powers are honestly wasted in a school system; she should have run a real police state! She would have been amazing at it!

LUCY SNOWE: Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired? ... I will not deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes...

Have I mentioned that Lucy drops a lot of comments that could be construed as incredibly gay? Lucy is very gay.

LUCY SNOWE: Each of the teachers in turn made me overtures of special intimacy; I tried them all...

Yes, Lucy does in fact date every female teacher in the school before discarding them one by one as boring, awful, etc. Sorry you're so picky, Lucy Snowe?!

The person in school that Lucy ACTUALLY spends the most time with is Ginevra Fanshawe, a sixteen-year-old student that Lucy accidentally sort-of befriended on the way to France, and who dropped Lucy the tip that led her to Madame Beck's.

Lucy thinks Ginevra is selfish, vain, mercenary, and incredibly hot. She goes on and on AND ON about how awful (and beautiful) she is. Out loud. All the time. To her face.

Ginevra Fanshawe, meanwhile, is just like 'let me tell you all about my devoted suitors and how boring they are and how I would much rather hang out here and be insulted by you, my very favorite cranky meanypants!'

GINEVRA FANSHAWE: "I am far more at my ease with you, old lady--you, you dear crosspatch--who take me at my lowest and know me to be coquettish, and ignorant, and flirting, and fickle, and silly, and selfish, and all the other sweet things you and I have agreed to be a part of my character."

LUCY SNOWE: I don't know why I chose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than to another; nor why, if two had to share the convenience of one drinking-vessel, as sometimes happened, I always contrived that she should be my convive, and rather liked to let her take the lion's share...

Don't you know, Lucy? DON'T YOU?

Lucy's like 'honestly I think you're a bit pathetic' and Ginevra's like 'you don't think so IN YOUR HEART' and Lucy's like 'in my heart you have not the OUTLINE of a place, I just turn you over in my BRAIN is all' and Ginevra's like 'really? REALLY? LET'S STAND IN FRONT OF A MIRROR AND TALK ABOUT HOW ATTRACTIVE I AM AND SEE IF I DON'T HAVE AN OUTLINE OF A PLACE IN YOUR HEART.' So, I mean. It's not ... a healthy relationship, and yet .....

LUCY SNOWE: Ginevra Fanshawe made no scruple of catching me as I was crossing the carre, whirling me round in a compulsory waltz, and heartily enjoying the mental and physical discomfiture her proceeding induced...

This is sexual harassment and Lucy Snowe doesn't have to take it, is what I'm saying, AND YET SHE DOES.

And then of course there's the school play -- but to introduce the school play we also must introduce the leading male characters, Dr. John and M. Paul.

Dr. John, Lucy wishes us to know, is a dreamboat. Lucy spends many, many paragraphs telling us how Dr. John is just objectively a dreamboat, it's not like she has a personal interest, this is a DISINTERESTED ASSESSMENT of Dr. John's features and character is all.

Dr. John is also a devoted suitor to Ginevra, who as established thinks devoted suitors are dull as ditchwater. Nonetheless, Dr. John spends many, many paragraphs telling Lucy how innocent and sweet and pure Ginevra is, while Lucy attempts not to laugh in his face.

M. Paul, meanwhile, is a tiny, cranky professor who appears to be the one male teacher at the school. His first big scene is when he decides that Lucy needs to have a role in the school play, so he grabs her away from a party and locks her in an attic, with rats, to learn her lines. He does not remember to bring her food or water.

(At this point, I'm like, well, NOW I know who Lucy is actually supposed to end up with, Brontes think a man is not even worth their time until they've locked somebody in an attic!)

SO. The school play, aka the best scene in the entire book. In this play, Lucy is supposed to be playing the foppish secondary love interest, to be rejected by the beautiful heroine (Ginevra, of course.)

The first thing that happens is one of the other teachers flips her shit because Lucy decides not to cross-dress. Lucy's attitude appears to be: why would you cross-dress when you could just MAKE IT GAYER?

OTHER TEACHER: How must it be, then? How accept a man's part, and go on the stage dressed as a woman?
LUCY SNOWE: I could not help turning upon her and saying that if she were not a lady and I a gentleman, I should feel disposed to call her out.

NOBODY TELLS LUCY SNOWE WHAT TO WEAR. (I'm not even going to talk about a hilarious bit later on when she freaks out over being given a pink dress for an event. Pink? PINK??? WHO EXPECTS LUCY SNOWE TO WEAR PINK. "I THOUGHT NO HUMAN FORCE SHOULD AVAIL TO PUT ME INTO IT.")

Anyway, Lucy and Ginevra get on stage together, with lovelorn Dr. John in the audience. Lucy pretty soon notices that despite the fact that Ginevra's supposed to fall in love with the other fellow on stage she is making a great point of demonstrating her attraction to Lucy; Lucy responds by ENTHUSIASTICALLY SEDUCING HER.

LUCY SNOWE: I knew not what possessed me either; but somehow, my longing was to eclipse the [romantic hero], i.e. Dr. John. Ginevra was tender; how could I be otherwise than chivalric?

GET IT, GIRL.

Tragically, it only happens the once; Lucy, unnerved by the capability for passion revealed in herself during this play, took a firm resolution, never to be drawn into a a similar affair.

Other notably gay moments in Lucy's life: that time that she's at a museum inspecting a mediocre naked Cleopatra painting while a DEEPLY SCANDALIZED M. Paul clutches his pearls --

M. PAUL: How dare you, a young person, sit coolly down, with the self-possession of a garcon, and look at that picture?
LUCY SNOWE: It is a very ugly picture, but I cannot at all see why I should not look at it.

-- that time she goes to the Opera and has an orgasmic reaction to the opera singer playing Vashti --

LUCY SNOWE: The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart out of its wonted orbit, the sunflower turned from the south to a fierce light, not solar -- a rushing, red, cometary light, hot on vision and to sensation.

-- that time she befriends Dr. John's other love interest, Paulina, who will not stop asking her to move in and be her companion!

PAULINA: Do you care for me, Lucy?
LUCY SNOWE: Yes, I do, Paulina.
PAULINA: And I love you.

In fact Paulina has this lovely idea that when she and Dr. John are married, Lucy is just going to move in with them and live with them forever in some sort of permanent arrangement.

However, by this point, Lucy has discovered the infinite joys of trolling Mr. Paul and is fully occupied with that. And I'm not going to lie, M. Paul is a weird pompous hyperbolic little dude -- let's not forget the scene where he cheerfully admits that he rented a room over the school just so he can spend his days spying on all the women in the garden; Lucy, to her credit, reacts with a justifiable WTF??? -- but there clearly is a certain joy to be found in trolling him. The scene where she accidentally-on-purpose breaks his glasses? PRICELESS.

"But," you may be asking, "all this is well and good, but what actually happens in Villette? Like, plot-wise?" Honestly .... not much. But sometimes things happen! For example, there's the time that Lucy, overcome with loneliness after six weeks alone, accidentally almost converts to Catholicism and then faints dramatically in the street! And the time that Madame Beck drugs Lucy to stop her from having a romantic meeting with M. Paul, and Lucy staggers out into the street and has a hallucinogenic episode in an Egyptian-themed carnival!

AND ALSO THERE'S THE GHOST NUN. Have I mentioned the ghost nun? There's a ghost nun. M. Paul and Lucy both see the ghost nun and M. Paul is like "this means we're destined to be together!"

Then Ginevra Fanshawe leaves a fake ghost nun in Lucy's bed, because Ginevra Fanshawe never met a plot element of this book she didn't want to make weirdly gay. I could go on, but I should probably stop. TALK TO ME ABOUT VILLETTE.

Comments

[rymenhild]

So, um, not to go to the autobiographical place, but Charlotte Bronte taught at this school in Brussels? And the head of the school was named Constantin Heger and he was obnoxiously judgy and also married and Charlotte kind of liked that? A lot?

Which is to say that scholars researching Villette have the hardest time not taking it as straight memoir with the occasional gloss of fictionality painted lightly on top. Which is also to say that I really wonder about Charlotte and her lady friends in Brussels.

[skygiants]

AND THEN HE AMBIGUOUSLY DIED IN AN AMBIGUOUS SHIPWRECK, take that, Constantin Heger!

[likeadeuce]

Wasn't Dr. John supposedly based on her editor and she would send him chapters where Dr. John came off well or badly depending on what kind of mood she was in w/r/t the editor?

[happydork]

Haha omg I love it!

[nextian]

I have GOT to reread Villette. I've never had a stronger emotional reaction to a book's ending, I was so angry I threw it across the elevator and broke it in half. And then kept it for another decade so I could look at it and seethe. I'm pretty sure I'd love it now.

[skygiants]

YOU HAVE GOT TO REREAD VILLETTE

[tempestsarekind]

I DID THAT TOOOO

(well, I threw it against a wall and then bought another copy with the translations of French in footnotes rather than endnotes, so it…would be easier to reread this book I was so angry at and was not actually planning to reread?)

I feel like I ought to read one of Anne Bronte's novels first, but maybe one of these days I'll attempt to read Villette again.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh man, I should get one of those, if the version I read had translations anywhere I didn't see them so a huge chunk of the story went right over my head.

Anne Bronte is pretty great though.

[skygiants]

I found it extremely rewarding, but on the other hand, as the review might demonstrate, I can't actually say I was super invested in Lucy's hypothetical domestic bliss with M. Paul...

[izilen]

So, in short, I should read it, right? I gather.

[skygiants]

I would be VERY FASCINATED to hear your thoughts on it!

[alias_sqbr]

You've persuaded me to consider rereading it, my memories of reading it as a very repressed bi teen was COMPLEX FEELINGS about Ginevra and frustrated het shippy feelings at the ending. But the important question is: how satisfying is the overall arc if you read it as a femslash shipper? Does Ginevra eventually 'grow up' and marry some dude? Am I going to have to start writing another 19th century novel dating sim?

[skygiants]

Ginevra does marry some relatively unimportant dude, but does not actually 'grow up'; she keeps on writing long affectionate letters to Lucy and appears to be pretty much the same inside as she ever was. Which could be more satisfying, but also could be less so -- and she is not at all punished for being Ginevra, which is both surprising and pleasing, for a 19th-century novel.

I FULLY SUPPORT A VILLETTE DATING SIM. There's so much scope for it! The entire book basically is an existential dating sim already!

[alias_sqbr]

Yes that is 100% an ending in need of femslash fic. My usual problem with these kinds of books is feeling like the protagonist is too invested in the canon relationship to fall for anyone else but that's not so much of a problem here, THANKS CHARLOTTE.

[rushthatspeaks]

This is fascinating, because when I read it at sixteen it was the most depressing book I had ever read, and in fact now, though I have not reread it, I still remember it as the most depressing book I have ever read.

I nodded in agreement with Joanna Russ's description of it as 'one long set-up for a prison break in which the escape never occurs'. It read as a chillingly accurate portrayal of a woman so damaged by patriarchy that she refuses to let herself have anything she truly enjoys, and who is just enough aware of her situation to reject the false consolation that would come from pretending she enjoys what she is supposed to enjoy. I literally sometimes have nightmares about that novel, because by the end of it I was praying she would have the strength to kill herself, which she clearly wanted to do, and she didn't even allow herself that.

... are we living in two separate universes, or have we just managed to interpret the text THAT DIFFERENTLY?

[skygiants]

I think it is probably six of one, half a dozen of the other, to be honest -- like, it's not like that's not there, but also Lucy is such an unreliable narrator that I think there's a different interpretation to be read into the text for everybody who reads it. Which I think is honestly part of the point; Lucy herself points out, several times, that none of the people observing her understand at all what she's really like, because she's presenting herself a certain way for each one of them. So why should we be any different? For that matter, why should she be any different? I think there's a good argument to be made that Lucy doesn't understand herself in the least.

Either way I don't see the ending as hopeless. The book's not written from the end of her life; it's true that she doesn't ever manage over the course of it to unlock herself from her private prison, but marrying M. Paul I think would have meant trapping herself in the imprint of his particular idea of her for good -- so the probable-tragedy of the ending means there's still a path open to finding a genuine self. Or so I like to think!

[landofnowhere]

Wow, thanks for the review. I missed all this when I read it nine-ish years ago!

Also when I was younger I was lacking enough in certain types of self-confidence (particularly in social/romantic contexts) that I didn't find it remarkable when protagonists had super low expectations (e.g. Sophie Hatter. though this is also a trope more broadly).

[skygiants]

This is definitely a much more broad trope; one of the interesting things about Villette is how it deconstructs it, or at least shines a harsher light on it. Because of course girls are rather expected to have low expectations and low self-esteem and be surprised and delighted when someone proves to love them anyway, aren't they? But Villette shows very clearly how much of a trap that is.

[landofnowhere]

That is a very good point, and one I really didn't see at the time.

I remembered a couple more things about Villette:

When I was young I read one of these partially fictionalized kids' biographies of Charlotte Bronte that had chosen to steal from Villette for material for the Belgium section. In particular it lifted the character of Ginevra Fanshawe entirely (though not the ghost nun bits) Which made it a bit weird when I got to read about her in the book, and knew she was going to elope.

Also that was when I picked up that Charlotte Bronte had serious issues with Catholicism (though I'm not very clear on what the issues were, other than nuns are scary, particularly if they are ghost nuns).

[skygiants]

omg. What's hilarious is that they stole the Ginevra Fanshawe bit, in particular. "Of all the things we believe are definitely, absolutely true about Charlotte Bronte's time in Belgium, it's that she was VERY JUDGY and VERY GAY."

If we accept Villette as autobiographical, Bronte's issues with Catholicism appear to have been mainly "I think I would have been an AWESOME Catholic but I REFUSE TO ALLOW MYSELF THE SATISFACTION."

[antisoppist]

I read Vilette in my teens (we did Jane Eyre as a set text at school) and didn't finish it because I liked the bits where it was like all the girls' school stories I was trying to pretend I wasn't still avidly reading except she would keep going on about this really annoying bloke and I thought she was stupid. He dies???? 16 yo me would have finished it if I'd have known he died!!

[skygiants]

HE DOES DIE. Well, ambiguously. The last two pages are like 'proooooooobably there was a shipwreck but YOU, DEAR READER, CAN PRETEND THERE WAS NO SHIPWRECK, IF IT'LL MAKE YOU HAPPY. (but there totally was a shipwreck.)'

I haven't even started reading this post yet but

[qian]

I LOVE VILLETTE AND I'M SO EXCITED TO READ THIS

Re: I haven't even started reading this post yet but

[qian]

I love how creepy Lucy Snowe is. She basically has inappropriate relationships with/feelings about EVERYONE IN HER LIFE. Also have you read the Brontes' letters? Because Charlotte's letters to RL M. Paul are SO CREEPY AND INAPPROPRIATE and just what Lucy Snowe might have written to M. Paul.

I think what fascinates me about the book and what draws me back again and again (I have reread it so many times) is just the intensity of emotional starvation in it. Intellectual as well. On every level Lucy has huge appetites -- for love, for intellectual stimulation -- and she is forced to suppress them (I don't think her low expectations are unfounded, basically, because she is at the bottom of the food chain in a society that barely recognises her as a worthy human being with her own thoughts, feelings, etc.). And they are never quite satisfied. It's so compelling to me.

Also she's SO WEIRD I LOVE IT

Re: I haven't even started reading this post yet but

[skygiants]

SHE'S SO WEIRD AND CREEPY AND IT'S AMAZING. One of my favorite moments is when, THREE QUARTERS OF THE WAY THROUGH THE BOOK, she's like "I'm going to tell you something about Paulina ... brace yourself ... OK ... OK here it is: I LIKE HER AS A HUMAN. This is something I will never say again, about anyone, ever, especially not all the other people I spend all my time obsessing over, so I hope you enjoyed it."

I haven't read Charlotte's letters (I haven't actually read any Charlotte except Jane Eyre!) but now I am increasingly feeling a need to. *__*

But yeah, I think what makes the book so incredibly compelling to me (despite the fact that very little actually happens!) is how much it's an exercise in checked potential -- it's like Lucy is constantly walking past these windows onto narrative pathways that might yield satisfaction or release, and she won't try and climb out them, or even look at them, because the fall is so high and the potential risks so great and she knows she has no spotters. But as a reader, you see that they're there, and the whole book it's like, Lucy, maybe just try one of them! Try just admitting to yourself that you'd like to look out one! DO MORE GAY THEATRICALS!

She's wound so tightly and compressed herself so small that I spent the whole book waiting for her to explode -- waiting for everything to explode, really, I was shocked that we reached the end without some more significant tragedy. I ended the book still feeling that the explosion was inevitable, just delayed into a time beyond the end of the book that we won't see.

Re: I haven't even started reading this post yet but

[qian]

Ohhhh read the Brontes' letters! There's a collection of the letters of all of them, I can't remember who edited it but I read it a while ago and it's AMAZING. Branwell is so deliciously awful. He writes all these incredibly bumptious letters to the Edinburgh Review trying to get published/a job and is roundly ignored by the editor.

But yeah, I think what makes the book so incredibly compelling to me (despite the fact that very little actually happens!) is how much it's an exercise in checked potential -- it's like Lucy is constantly walking past these windows onto narrative pathways that might yield satisfaction or release, and she won't try and climb out them, or even look at them, because the fall is so high and the potential risks so great and she knows she has no spotters.

You're totally right -- it's that sense of a ticking time bomb that never goes off that makes the book so compelling even though the pacing and plot are so bizarre.

[wingstodust]

Okay you've sold me, I don't know why I haven't read this novel yet.