Villette

“I heard her weep. Other children in grief or pain cry aloud, without shame or restraint; but this being wept: the tiniest occasional sniff testified to her emotion.”

Lucy notes Paulina’s unusual emotional comportment. She is unlike other children in almost every way, but her morose demeanor is much more like an adult’s than a six-year-old girl’s. This passage reveals Paulina is not only sad in her present circumstances separated from her father but that she has experienced some sort of trauma in her past—probably the death of her mother. 

“One might have thought the child had no mind or life of her own, but must necessarily live, move, and have her being in another; now that her father was taken from her, she nestled to Graham, and seemed to feel by his feelings: to exist in his existence.”

Charlotte Brontë focuses on women and their roles not only in society but in relationships—specifically, the power dynamics between the sexes. Lucy notices that Paulina, even at a young age, has learned to find her value in the eyes and attentions of a man. Lucy is unfamiliar with this feeling, as she prides herself on being an independent and unemotional woman.

“Mamma, I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities; but I should be dull without her…”

Graham refers to Paulina as a “changeling,” or a fairylike creature. This is an allusion to the ancient Irish and Scottish legend that children were often stolen and replaced with imps or elves. The myth purported to explain ill health or bad behavior in a child. In this passage, however, Graham is not concerned with Paulina’s health; he sees her odd behavior as a source of entertainment.

“I thought of the Styx, and of Charon rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions.”

Lucy has decided to take her fate into her own hands and travel abroad in search of employment and a new start. However, she first must make a sea crossing. Journeys by boat often symbolize change or transition in life; they can also symbolize the voyage from this life to the next. The mention of Styx and Charon is an allusion to the latter. In Greek mythology, Charon was the ferryman who rowed the dead over the River Styx to the underworld.

“[S]o peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.”

The author uses personification in this passage to highlight Lucy’s internal monologue. Liberty and hope are portrayed as women guiding and helping Lucy on her journey. Lucy refuses to be imprisoned by the precariousness of her existence as a woman without a husband, family, or resources and instead sees her freedom as fortuitous.

“Day-dreams are delusions of the demon.”

As the other passengers have taken ill, Lucy basks in the beauty of the sea journey and slips into a dreamlike state where she imagines all of Europe and the beauty of its natural landscape. She abruptly emerges from the daydream realizing that she is now also seasick, and she addresses the reader alliteratively, warning that daydreams can be a sinister trick of the mind.

“I informed her very plainly that I believed him much too good for her, and intimated with equal plainness my impression that she was but a vain coquette.”

Ginevra Fanshawe is Lucy Snowe’s complete opposite. She is selfish, flighty, and shallow. Lucy often judges others without verbalizing her thoughts, but in her conversation with Ginevra about “Isidore," Lucy allows herself to speak freely. Lucy’s time at the boarding school and the improvement of her station have given her newfound confidence to vocalize her thoughts.

“I looked at him: the force of surprise, and also of conviction, made me forget myself; and I only recovered wonted consciousness when I saw that his notice was arrested, and that it had caught my movement in a clear little oval mirror...”

When Dr. John is in the school, Lucy has taken to watching and observing him. Since others often ignore her, she assumes Dr. John also does not see her. She, however, sees him in a new way—one that suggests she is falling for him. The author uses the idea of vision symbolically in this passage; Lucy is using her literal vision to watch John but is also understanding him more deeply, and he is noticing her for the first time, but only in the mirror’s backward reflection. 

“That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly ‘All-hail,’ and her soul rejected the intimacy.”

The author employs personification and allusion in this passage to highlight Madame’s realization that she is too old for Dr. John’s affections, describing the feeling of disappointment as a hag—an older, witchlike woman. The hag speaks words from one of the witches in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In the play, the witches greet Macbeth with a prophesy that he will be king. This hag greets Madame with a reminder of her aging appearance, which is unlikely to draw suitors or admiration from anyone in society.

“No Mause Headrigg ever felt a stronger call to take up her testimony against Sergeant Bothwell, than I—to speak my mind in this matter of the popish ‘lecture pieuse.’”

This passage illustrates Lucy’s conflict with the religion of Villette and the boarding school students. Her Protestant beliefs are different from Catholicism, and the practice of evening study is not only foreign to her but incenses her. Lucy wants to debate the lesson, but this would go against tradition. The author inserts an allusion to the novel Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott: Lucy compares herself to the military leader featured in the novel, which is about the Scottish fight for independence in the late 17th century.

“My few dresses were folded as I had left them; a certain little bunch of white violets that had once been silently presented to me by a stranger (a stranger to me, for we have never exchanged words), and which I had dried and kept for its sweet perfume between the folds of my best dress.”

Lucy has revealed very little about her past, yet she drops hints to the reader throughout the narrative. In checking her belongings after Madame’s secret raid, Lucy mentions the flowers, which she says were given to her by a stranger. Much later, she reveals that it was M. Paul who gave the flowers to her; that she keeps this a secret for so long mirrors her slow journey towards recognizing the nature of her feelings for the man.

“I had sought through a dozen shops till I lit upon a crape-like material of purple-gray—the colour, in short, of dun mist, lying on a moor in bloom.”

Most women choose a white, gauzy gown for Madame’s grand party. Lucy chooses a modest garment in a dark, hazy color. She compares it to a murky, shadowy presence lying across the moors—rolling hills in Northern England sometimes covered in dark purple heather. The moors have a haunting appearance and play a symbolic role in many of the Brontë sisters’ novels. The color also reflects Lucy’s character. Like the moors, she is mysterious and prone to bouts of dark moods.

“[T]he mere relief of communication in an ear which was human and sentient, yet consecrated—the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating, long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not again be diffused—had done me good.”

Without the language to conceptualize her trauma, Lucy expends a lot of mental energy forcing her pain into the background. In her desperation, Lucy enters the church looking for help and finds it in a reluctant confession to a Catholic priest.

“Hypochondria has that wont, to rise in the midst of thousands—dark as Doom, pale as Malady, and well-nigh strong as Death.”

Hypochondria in the Victorian era encompassed more than anxiety about one’s health, resembling what we now call clinical depression. Lucy has experienced this disorder and recognizes the signs of the disorder in others, including the king. She again anthropomorphizes strong feelings in this passage—somewhat ironically, since the feeling in question has the effect of cutting the person experiencing it off from other people.

“The world can understand well enough the process of perishing for want of food: perhaps few persons can enter into or follow out that of going mad from solitary confinement.”

After experiencing the healing effects of time with her godmother and John, Lucy plunges into a deep depression when she is separated from them. Though she is surrounded by students and faculty at the school, she feels completely alone. The author, through Lucy’s words, compares loneliness to starvation, conveying both the physical and emotional damage incurred.

“He believed in his soul that lovely, placid, and passive feminine mediocrity was the only pillow on which manly thought and sense could find rest for its aching temples; and as to work, male mind alone could work to any good practical result.”

M. Paul Emanuel’s beliefs on the role of women are emblematic of the era in which the novel was written. M. Paul indignantly refutes Lucy’s interest in furthering her education, describing women’s proper role as one of emotional support—an allusion to the feminine ideal of the “angel in the house.” His tirade clashes with his profession, as he spends his days educating young girls. Though he often espouses the patriarchal values of the era, his behavior reveals he may feel differently deep in his soul.

“I see you have entered into my secrets.”

For most of the narrative, it is Lucy who has kept secrets. No one can plumb the depths of her personality and unearth the truth of her nature. Her discovery of the truth about M. Paul’s past is a pivotal moment and a turning point in Lucy and M. Paul’s relationship. Lucy now has context for his volatile nature. She also can better understand him, as she also knows what it means to hide one’s past.

“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”

After learning the secrets of M. Paul’s past, Lucy is hopeful for their future friendship. She longs to spend more time becoming acquainted with him. She learns, however, that life never turns out quite as she hopes. In this passage, the author offers a precept that transcends the time and place of the novel.

“I shall share no man’s or woman’s life in this world, as you understand sharing. I think I have one friend of my own, but am not sure; and till I am sure, I live solitary.”

In two sentences, Lucy has summed up her entire personality. Paulina worries about her friend’s loneliness, but Lucy has learned to welcome solitude rather than fear it. Being content with being alone has become a part of Lucy’s identity. This moment reveals a key moment in the protagonist's journey to self-acceptance.

“An amulet was indeed made, a spell framed which rendered enmity impossible. She was to become a bond to both, an influence over each, a mutual concord.”

Paulina snips a lock of hair from both her father and John, encloses them in a locket, and wears it around her neck. This represents her love and devotion to both men and seals the union between the two families. The practice of framing a lock of one’s lover’s hair in a ring or locket was popular during the Victorian era.

“I was to be held quiet for one night.”

Lucy lives in an era where it was seen not only as unwomanly but inhuman for a female to express passionate feelings publicly. She cannot contain her grief over M. Paul’s leaving, and it erupts out of her in tears and terse words for Madame Beck. Madame sees the only way to subdue Lucy is to drug her. However, in an ironic turn, the drug fails to anesthetize Lucy and instead sets her free on a hallucinogenic tour of the city.

“Truth stripped away Falsehood, and Flattery, and Expectancy, and here I stand—free!”

Having made peace with the reality of M. Paul’s imminent departure, Lucy resolves to start her life fresh on her own terms. She has endured too many disappointments by relying on others for her happiness. At this moment she also resolves the ongoing battle between reason and imagination that has raged within her. Reason has won by telling her the truth. She is now free to move forward and pursue her independence.

“The secret of my success did not lie so much in myself, in any endowment, any power of mine, as in a new state of circumstances, a wonderfully changed life, a relieved heart.”

Lucy’s transformation is complete with her departure from Rue Fossette and the control of Madame Beck. She credits her success at her new school almost solely to escaping the convent and breathing the fresh air of a new home and new job. The change of environment has cured her depression and now she can thrive.