We all know Charlotte Bronte best for her Jane Eyre. Villette is her lesser known work, a book that I stumbled upon when I looked out to read a classic.
A comparison to Jane Eyre was just inevitable. My first, biased opinion was that it did fall short of Jane Eyre – even as Charlotte Bronte tries the trope of gothic horror in dramatizing the narration from time to time. But once I persisted in going through its word-dreary passages, I found it to be growing on me.
Lucy Snowe, the protagonist in Villette, is (also, like Jane Eyre) a teacher in a Girls School called Rue Fossette, run by a formidable woman called Madame Beck. (The Novel is believed to be inspired from Charlotte Bronte’s own life when she was a teacher in a school for a brief period, during which she had experienced love, longing and loss)
The story moves at a pace which is painstaking, not only because its narration is slow, but also because we as readers are entirely privy to the innermost thought process and the turmoil in the mind Lucy Snowe.
Lucy Snowe is an orphan, living entirely on her own terms and struggling to find a place in the world. Lucy Snowe is an enigma, typically like the heroines of the Bronte sisters novels that we love, and she is not described as beautiful or attractive, at least to her own mind.
She is truly unusual in many ways. She travels alone, lives among strangers in strange Inns, negotiates for her livelihood and even learns a foreign tongue with the vigor of a scholar for the sake of survival. She refuses pretense for the want of attention; in her attitude and manner she remains unchanged unlike her friend Paulina who poses to be naive for not wanting to break the illusion of her innocence in the father’s and lover’s mind.
Lucy practically worships those she loves, and yet argues when she has to or when something disagrees to her mind. At one point in the novel, she refuses to be a ‘companion’ to Pauline in the return of much needed financial security, so much she values her freedom! She also deals with her loneliness, and even as it takes a toll on her physical health she does see herself as being dependent on anyone.
The surname ‘Snowe’ is an apparent allegory to the coldness in which Lucy wraps herself most of the time in the story. She is cold with regards to the expression of her own sentiments, even to herself, and it stems from self pity and the belief in the infallibility of her unchanging fate.
She does not extend to those she loves; her attitude to them is in fact generous and warm. It is towards her own self that she disciplines her emotions and attempts to resist all the temptations that may lead her astray on her self chosen solitary path that she believes herself to be destined to.
In spite of this, however, she falls in love twice.
First with her childhood acquaintance Dr John Brenton, the tall, dark, handsome types. He is gentle in his temperament, generous to his friends, attached to his family, self reliant and chivalrous- a lady’s man in fact. The other- Paul Emmanuel, is somewhat his contrast, brooding, mercurial, older than Lucy in age. Lucy experiences a turbulence at both her romantic encounters, and in both she attempts to suppress her emotions. In one scene, after suffering from a heartbreak she refuses to openly acknowledge, she buries the letters of her lover in the garden, an example of the cruelty she lashes out on herself to overcome her pain.
But her self imposed impassiveness to the reelings of her heart fails both the times. She is not able save herself from the yearnings, heartaches and the pain that the men in her life brought.
Lucy fails – as her deeply repressed desires win. And in showing this, this exactly – Charlotte Bronte succeeds.
She succeeds in showing the assertion of the desires of a woman towards wanting a life with a man she loves and a life she wants to lead, in spite of the fate decided by her social standing. (It is here we get a glimpse into Charlotte Bronte’s own mind, in her struggles to establish her unconventional career of writer and in her incompetent dealings with the men in her life, who could never complete her).
If we compare Villette with Jane Eyre, we find both of its heroines falling in love with the ‘wrong man’ – unstable, complex, short tempered and rather dominating with a dark past. In my opinion however, it will be interesting to also ponder on why these men (Rochester and Paul Emanuel) fall in love with these ‘plain, quiet, and socially less’ women. Perhaps it is the individualism of Jane Eyre and Lucy Snow, their ability to reason and their disregard to the intimidating persona these men embody for everyone is what appeals to them.
Our heroines also gradually discover a ‘humane side’ to their heroes and begin to love them – but only give in when they find these men valuing their freedom and individuality.
Charlotte Bronte thus takes a departure from the societal portrayal of the archetypal Ladies’ man’ (soft spoken, understanding, chivalrous etc) and makes heroes of men who love a woman for their independence and free will. These men are also products of the existing class systems but yet are, somehow, more open minded. They are not discouraged by strong willed and thinking women, like most men would, and somehow so, make for the imperfectly perfect ‘heroes’ that the Bronte sisters dreamt to find in reality also.
There is beauty and there is also pain, in the passion of the women who fatalistically fall for these ‘forbidden men’, and rebel for them against their own wills and socially imposed norms.
Charlotte Bronte speaks her mind through her novels, and through her, we understand the suppressive world where women have to strive to express their wants, to assert their aspirations and fulfill the smallest of their desires. We want to fall for the men in her stories. We want to find these men to make them fall in love with us. We want to flow unrestrained, like the words of the Bronte sisters, in searching for what they wanted in their lifetimes.