Art Mimicking Life: Villette & Charlotte Bronte

Before I dive into the meat and bones of this post (i.e., fangirling about Charlotte Bronte's Villette) I have to say that I hated Umberto Eco's Island of the Day Before. It sat on my "to read" pile for at least four years and there it should have mouldered forever. I skimmed the last 100-so pages and neither missed nor regretted anything. The main character was a stupid sap and the plot was thin at best, non-existent at worst. I read paragraphs of obscure pseudo-Latin nomenclature that made me want to close my eyes. I kept turning to the front and back covers to verify that yes, respectable people on this planet had favorably reviewed this book. But here is Will Self's review for The Guardian and IT IS GLORIOUS: "The machine I began to long for was one that would automatically read the novels of Umberto Eco, leaving me free to get on with my life."

Finally free of that nightmare, I got on with my life and turned to a trusted author who could revive my flagging reading spirits: Charlotte Bronte and her last novel, Villette. What a totally engrossing, emotional book! I laughed, I cried, I got scared. It's a book I enjoyed reading and would have kept reading for another 500 pages. Had I blogged immediately after, this post would have just consisted of "EEEEEE!!!". So, let's go about this in a more civilized way and briefly look at some parallels between real-life Charlotte Bronte and fictional heroines Lucy Snowe and Jane Eyre. Then deal with that infamous ending.

Brussels in 1868 (from www.thebrusselsbrontegroup.org)

Villette is narrated by Lucy Snowe, a poor independent woman who has taken an English teaching position in the French town of Villette. Here she is reunited with a handsome former acquaintance from her childhood, Dr. John Graham Bretton, and the ethereal, child-like Polly. Lucy is also introduced to the head mistress of the school, Madame Beck, and the literature professor Monsieur Paul Emanuel. The beginning of the book takes place in Lucy's childhood, with little Polly declaring her love for Dr. John, then a young teen. Things fast forward as Lucy moves on to a nursing position with elderly Miss Marchmont, then fast forward again when Lucy travels to Villette. Of course, Dr. John re-enters the story at this point and there's a whole setup with Lucy developing unrequited romantic feelings towards him. During this little subplot, I'm wondering "but what about crazy Polly" and beginning to notice the literature professor, Monsieur Paul. The second half of the book is where things really take off and Bronte is in absolute virtuoso mode. Lucy and Monsieur Paul's romance doesn't reach the desperate heights of Cathy and Heathcliff, but holy smokes it's a solid second place.

Pensionnat Heger where Charlotte studied in Brussels (from www.thebrusselsbrontegroup.org)

Nabokov advises readers to "identify not with the girl or boy in the book but with the mind that conceived and composed the book" (Lectures on Russian Lit).  Jane Eyre and Villette are distorted mirrors to Charlotte Bronte's personal life. Her autobiographical details are not critical to "understanding" either novel but help link them thematically, for example ...

There's family weirdness and tragedy. Both Jane and Lucy had abusive childhoods and strike out on their own as young adults. In real life, the Bronte's mother died early and the children were sent to a girls' school where two of them later died from illness. Charlotte later had multiple positions as a governess and also studied for several years in Brussels (the model for the town of Villette).

Gothic gloom! In Jane Eyre there is the mad wife in the attic, in Villette there is the ghost nun and Lucy's depression (likely informed by Charlotte's own depression at the recent death of her sisters). One critique is that in Villette "the madness is not split off from the central character" and this forms Lucy into a more complex and complete version of Jane (Imagining Characters, p.77).

Passionate and difficult men! Rochester and Monsieur Paul are two versions of the same character, based off Charlotte's professor in Brussels, Monsieur Heger. Dr. John is likely based off Charlotte's publisher, George Smith. The author's romantic feelings for both men were not returned. However, especially in Villette, we get some awesome sexual power dynamics and tension in the back-and-forth dialogues between Lucy and Monsieur Paul. They intentionally provoke each other, fly into rages, reconcile and then do it all over again because they love it. It's EXCELLENT. ("EEEE!!") Speaking of men, another great thing about Villette is that the reader doesn't suffer through a St John Rivers snoozefest subplot. Also see: Hark, a vagrant and Charlotte Bronte's classroom fantasy

Ok, so, SPOILERS! If you want to read Villette and don't know the ending, don't read the end of this post! 

My experience with the ending.

There's a persistent interpretation that the very end of Villette is a "double ending" and the reader gets to choose what happened. This is false. There are a handful of hints throughout the book that point to the true ending. 1) Lucy the narrator is an older woman, so the entire story is related after it has already happened and certain phrases are in a past tense where they could be in present; 2) the entire purpose of having Miss Marchmont in the book is so she can tell her tragic story about Frank; 3) when Monsieur Paul is away, Lucy calls it the "three happiest years of my life" (p.448).

So basically Monsieur Paul is finally on his way home across the Atlantic to where he has left Lucy yet-to-be-married but with her own school, then there's a huge storm and this happens:

Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.
Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Pere Silas; Madame Walravens fulfilled her ninetieth year before she died. Farewell.

The End. We get no coda for Lucy or Monsieur Paul, and "let it be theirs" to conceive joy, "let them" picture a happy ending (but not her). I think I read this final paragraph, really the final three paragraphs, like ten times because I was so shocked. I've now mulled it over for the past week and it still breaks my heart. It's like if Rochester had burned down with his house and attic wife. It's not a "real life is hard" ending because it's still a kind of romantic tragedy and deeply within the world of the novel -- it's appropriate to Lucy's difficult life and story (and Charlotte's, considering the impossibility of a happy ending with Heger). But wow, that one hurts. Find more here: The Valve, Villette Chapters I-42: Farewell

Let's take it back to sunny with one of my favorite quotes/moments:

"And what did I say to M. Paul Emanuel? Certain junctures of our lives must always be difficult of recall to memory. Certain points, crises, certain feelings, joys, griefs, and amazements, when reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun." (p.442)

Bottom line: Insta-cherish. Keeping this little book next to its sisters to be reread many times in the future.