Classics for Beginners discussion

VILLETTE by Charlotte Bronte is the quarterly read for Oct-Dec 2015. Read at your own pace and please use the "spoiler" tag when appropriate, so as not to spoil the plot for slower readers.



"Villette! Villette! Have you read it?" exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Brontë's final novel appeared in 1853. "It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power."



About the author:

In 1842, Charlotte Brontë was 26 when she traveled to Brussels with her sister Emily. In Brussels, they enrolled in a pensionnat (boarding school) run by M. and Mme. Constantin Héger, where Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music in exchange for room and board.

Their time there was cut short when their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, died in October 1842, who had joined the Brontë family to care for the children after the death of Maria Brontë, the mother of the Brontë sisters.

Charlotte returned to Brussels a few months later to resume a teaching position, but became lonely and homesick, and fell in love with M. Héger, a married man. She returned to her family's rectory in Haworth, England, in January 1844.

Charlotte drew on this experience for her first (and unsuccessful) novel The Professor. After several publishers rejected it, Brontë reworked the material and made it the basis of Villette. Most literary historians believe that the character of M. Paul Emanuel is based upon that of M. Héger, and that the character of Graham Bretton was modeled after Brontë's publisher, George Murray Smith, who was once her suitor.

Click here for the full Goodreads biography on Charlotte Brontë.



About the book:

Villette is an 1853 novel by Charlotte Brontë, and was her fourth novel. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist, Lucy Snowe, travels from England to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. The novel is set in the English countryside, in London, and (primarily) in the fictional city of Villette (based on Brussels) in the fictional Kingdom of Labassecour (based on Belgium). "Labassecour" is French for farmyard.

Themes

Villette is noted more for its acute tracing of Lucy's psychology than its plot, widely celebrated as an exploration of gender roles and repression.

In The Madwoman in the Attic, critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have argued that the character of Lucy Snowe is based in part on William Wordsworth's "Lucy" poems. Gilbert and Gubar emphasize the idea of feminine re-writing. Some critics have explored the issues of Lucy's psychological state in terms of what they call "patriarchal constructs" which form her cultural context.

Villette also explores isolation and cross-cultural conflict in Lucy's attempts to master the French language, as well as conflicts between her English Protestantism and Catholicism. Her denunciation of Catholicism is unsparing: e.g., "God is not with Rome."

(Source: Wickipedia)



Adaptations

In print
Jamaica Kincaid's novel Lucy (1990) draws numerous themes, character names, and plot elements from Villette, both echoing its concern of female repression while also offering an implicit postcolonial critique of the novel's slave-owning love interest.

In dramatizations
In 1970, the BBC produced a television miniseries (5 episodes) based on Villette, directed by Moira Armstrong and written by Lennox Phillips. It starred Judy Parfitt as Lucy Snowe, Bryan Marshall as Dr. John Graham Bretton, Peter Jeffrey as Paul Emanuel, and Mona Bruce as Mme. Beck.


In 1999, the novel was adapted as a three-hour radio serial for BBC Radio 4. It was broadcast in February 1999 with Catherine McCormack as Lucy Snowe, Joseph Fiennes as Dr. Graham Bretton, Harriet Walter as Mme. Beck, James Laurenson as M. Paul Emanuel, and Keira Knightley as Polly. It was directed by Catherine Bailey and written by James Friel. Villette went on to win a Sony Award.

In August 2009, the novel was adapted as a two-week-long serial for BBC Radio 4, directed by Tracey Neale and with Anna Maxwell Martin as Lucy Snowe.



Don't have the book?

You can find a free version of the book from the following sources:

* Project Gutenberg

* Amazon Kindle

* B&N Nook
(You can pick up this free version, which according to comments is riddled with typos, but I would recommend this version, which is what I have.)

* Goodreads/Feedbooks

I can't wait! I'll be starting this after I get back from my honeymoon at the end of October.

I've never read anything by Charlotte Brontë (I was supposed to read Jane Eyre in high school but watch the movie instead....now I regret that).

RebeccaS wrote: "I can't wait! I'll be starting this after I get back from my honeymoon at the end of October.

I've never read anything by Charlotte Brontë (I was supposed to read Jane Eyre in high school but wat..."


I recently The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, which has me pulling out by copy of Jane Eyre for a reread, which I enjoyed as much as the first two times I read it. I've not read Villette yet, so am looking forward to getting to it in October.

I'll be reading Persuasionfirst, and then will be joining in.

I've read it before, but it was a couple of decades ago and I don't recall any of it really.

Great introduction, Heather!

RebeccaS wrote: "I can't wait! I'll be starting this after I get back from my honeymoon at the end of October.

I've never read anything by Charlotte Brontë (I was supposed to read Jane Eyre in high school but wat..."

I am assuming that your honeymoon would normally follow a wedding, yes? Congratulations, Rebecca, and the very best of luck to you and may you have a lifetime of happiness.

Yes Henry! October 10th it's coming so soon. Thanks!!

I am going to join in on the fray on this one.

Note, there is a great deal for a Whispersynched Audible / Kindle match. Buy the Kindle version for 99 cents and get the Audible for 49 cents.

http://www.amazon.com/Villette-Pengui...

Buy the "Kindle June 24, 2004" version first, then add the Audible narration for 49 cents. Not a bad deal.

That said I didn't care for the narrator on this version so I went a slightly more expensive path. I will have to search back for the sales page, it is a little convoluted.

Congratulations Rebecca! :)

I did want to comment on Villette since I recently read the novel. This isn't a spoiler but a general comment about the pacing and construction of the plot. It is helpful to go into the story with a lot of patience (which unfortunately I did not have during the time I read it). The story is rather slow moving and some details are purposely not revealed right away. Had I realized the pacing and lack of details were integral to the story before I started reading Villette, it likely would have been a more enjoyable experience for me.

OK this is weird how I had to do this. I did not like the narrator in the edition that I posted above. So I went on Audible and found a version that I liked. Then I went back to Amazon and found that if I bought the kindle version, I could get this for $2.99. The required Kindle version was also $2.99. But when you bought the required Kindle version it defaults to the same Audible version that I didn't like. So here is what I had to do. I bought the Modern Library version labeled Kindle January 7, 1999 for $2.99 first:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000...

Then I did NOT click add the Audible version because it was taking me back to the 49 cent version. Instead I accessed the Audible version that I wanted and now the price was reduced to $2.99. Note this rigamarole was all due to the fact that I preferred the second narrator far more than first. I am sure that once you got into the book the first narrator would be fine.

Here is the Audible version that I bought:

http://www.amazon.com/Villette/dp/B00...

I spent 6 bucks instead $1.48, but consider the quality of the second narrator to be worth the difference.

I picked up the Kindle/audiobook combo today, but probably won't be able to start it until towards the end of October. I have a few others to finish first... :)

☯Emily wrote: "Great introduction, Heather!"

Thanks, Emily! :)

I read this one not so long ago, I will comment my general view in the last post, but I will put at front a recommendation for all readers: If you dont speak french, get a copy with every french phrase translated or you will get tired of this book pretty soon. Also, English is not my first language so reading this with such an extensive vocabulary would have been fastidious. So, if you dont read English perfectly, I would suggest to get a copy in your own language.

I am so happy I am reading this on Kindle then as it has a French Dictionary.

You mean that French degree will finally come in handy!?

Rainey wrote: "I am so happy I am reading this on Kindle then as it has a French Dictionary."

Thanks for the tip!

In the first few chapters bad things happen to everyone. Charlotte had lost her sisters so she was undoubtedly sad and you can see it in her writing. I think about 50 pages in and 7 bad things have happened to 5 characters. Don't read it when you are depressed.

And definitely have a French dictionary handy. Ms. Bronte must have assumed her readers would understand French.

One of the things I find interesting is that Lucy, like Jane Eyre, is an independent woman who doesn't need a man to take care of her. She can take care of herself. This must be fairly unusual at that time.

Anne Brontë write about the working women, those without money or many times, tight family bonds. Her tone is even darker in this one, the inner thoughts of a lonely woman in a foreign country.

Karel wrote: "Anne Brontë write about the working women, those without money or many times, tight family bonds. Her tone is even darker in this one, the inner thoughts of a lonely woman in a foreign country."

Karel, I think you're confusing your Brontes -- this particular book is by Charlotte, though Anne also wrote about a "working" woman (Agnes Grey). ;-)

Heather L wrote: "Karel, I think you're confusing your Brontes -- this particular book is by Charlotte, though Anne also wrote about a "working" woman"

By working woman I mean not aristocrat, ergo they had to work to subsist (as teachers, governess, etc). Of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte is my favorite, The Professor is about a working woman (a teacher) in a foreign country, but the tone in that one is more hopeful. Jane Eyre is also a working woman, the governess of a french girl. The only novel of Charlotte I havent read yet is Shirley. I havent read any novel of Anne, it is really hard to find a spanish copy in my country. And Wuthering Heights by Emily... well, suffice to say that it is not my tempo at all.

I started last night. Only a few chapters in so far, but I'm loving it.

I also started it last night, and am only a few chapters in. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll get to spend much time with it this weekend. I do like the short chapters and it seems to read fairly fast so far.

I'm up to Lucy having being in Villette for a little while. As another poster mentioned, there is French peppered through the text, but the kindle version I have (Penguin) has the translations which is awesome.

Lucy's move to Villette reminded me a little of Jane Eyre's leaving of Thornfield. Of course, entirely different circumstances, but similar in that they were both young women with limited resources and without any real plans. I guess Lucy had hopes for what would happen on arrival, but it all seemed a bit sudden and no real planning happened.

Man I am so behind!! I am trying to start this book next week.

It does seem a little forced. I mean she just wanders off, gets on a ferry, and the next thing you know she has a great job. I have a feeling that didn't happen to a lot of women in the early 1800's.

I'm almost done with this section. Owing to a new job started last month, my reading time has been drastically reduced. When I do have time to read at night, I am often so tired I fall asleep before I can finish a chapter. I can usually read on the bus, but sometimes that is also impossible, such as last Friday night, when the chick sitting behind me was practically yelling into her phone the entire ride. Like the other 50 people on board wanted to hear all the intimate details of her life. :-P Anyway, hope to make it through this section tonight.

Heather L wrote: " the chick sitting behind me was practically yelling into her phone the entire ride..."
That sounds horrible. I live with headphones all day long (classical music when I want to concentrate in my book), I know I know, I must look like a teenager but I loathe hearing others people conversations, and in this huge city, it is almost imposible not to.

Karel: It was quite annoying. Thankfully, the last two nights were much quieter, which is pretty impressive for weekend nights. I finally got through part one and have started part two.

This is a little bit off topic, but as I'm starting to read it's making me curious about the lives of the Bronte sisters. Does anybody know of a good, comprehensive biography of the three of them?

I'm starting this one now! And it has my favorite narrator davina porter!

Edit: Though I liked the narrator, I think her voice is a little too chippy to really bring the sadness/darkness to the scenes that the author was going for.

RebeccaS wrote: "I'm starting this one now! And it has my favorite narrator davina porter!

Edit: Though I liked the narrator, I think her voice is a little too chippy to really bring the sadness/darkness to the sc..."


Sorry to hear your favorite narrator is disappointing you in this one.

Heather L wrote: "RebeccaS wrote: "I'm starting this one now! And it has my favorite narrator davina porter!

Edit: Though I liked the narrator, I think her voice is a little too chippy to really bring the sadness/d..."

I think it's because she doesn't have a dark or dull tone, which I was expected with the tone of this book. But she is VERY easy to listen to since I am used to this book, which is good for following along.


Thomas wrote: "It does seem a little forced. I mean she just wanders off, gets on a ferry, and the next thing you know she has a great job. I have a feeling that didn't happen to a lot of women in the early 1800's."

I agree with you. I was thinking, what the heck is she doing? She doesn't speak French and she just picks up and moves countries and voila she has a great job and learns French? I know it's to get the plot going, but does seem unnatural.

I just finished this section and while I am enjoying the narration and the writing, getting the plot to come forward is like pulling teeth. For the most part, I had no idea what the point of this book was even. But now it seems to be centering around Dr. John and his possible love interests? Lucy must become involved somehow (I hope) because it's a annoying not having any juicy details!!

I don't think I would be able to survive living in that dark house alone for a long time, so I'm not surprised that Lucy went a little crazy and sick. However, for someone who fled to a new country just to see if she could find something.... I would expect her to be a little more resilient.

Ashley wrote: "Does anybody know of a good, comprehensive biography of the three of them?"

The most famous biography of the Bronte sisters is "The life of Charlotte Bronte" written by Elizabeth Gaskell (which novels I enjoyed). I dont have patience for non-fiction so I read several prologues ;)

I finished reading Elizabeth Gaskell's "The life of Charlotte Bronte" recently and enjoyed it very much. I loved reading all the letters Charlotte had written to various people in this book. I have ordered "The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family" by Julia Baker and should be receiving it this week. I am looking forward to reading that as well. I am on chapter 15 of " Villette" at this point and am finding it a real challenge.

I found similarities between Jenny Wren in Our Mutual Friend and Polly. Both seemed wise beyond their years when it came to their speech patterns and outward fraility and inner strength.

I have only just started and am on chapter five however, I don't think we have seen the last of Paulina and wonder what she will be like when she becomes grown up.