I love Charlotte Brontë’s writing. I love her protagonists. She does moralize, but it doesn’t bother me; I feel I could read her writing all of the time.
There are a lot of similarities between Jane Eyre and Villette. The moral, high-valued, independent woman makes her living as a teacher and tries to keep her integrity in a world that tries to tempt her toward loosening her principles. She loves to tease—and eventually falls in love with—a crotchety, ill-tempered older man who has his own hidden reasons why a marriage is impractical. That description could apply to either novel. But this isn’t a critique or a complaint. I like the formula, if you can call it that since I never felt like I was reading the same story over again. Each novel stands on its own and the characters are similar but unique.
Paul is much more irascible and intolerant than Rochester while also being less arrogant, Lucy Snowe more cynical and humorously sarcastic than Jane while also being more fallible to beauty. She has more of a hard, cold reserve while Jane has a more gentle one. In fact, her as a narrator has more reserve, too. She hides from the reader more. There were some small events early in the narrative, of her childhood, and how she ended up alone that she would pass over with strange vagueness. She recognized a character from her childhood but didn’t reveal her discovery to us until a few chapters later. And she hardly ever spoke of her feelings in a straightforward manner. When she confessed in plain language that she liked a character (Paulina), she immediately apologized for her plainspeaking: “I liked her. It is not a declaration I have often made concerning my acquaintance, in the course of this book; the reader will bear with it for once.”
As a reader, I do prefer Jane’s open-hearted observations. I felt more drawn and sympathetic toward her. But at the same time, I understand and relate to Lucy’s reserve. She prefers to be ignored than misunderstood, she hides behind her cold mask, avoiding great pain by not seeking great happiness. She insists on being “stoical” about her present, “dead” to her future, because she does not expect much of either.
Despite her guard, she experiences the pain of unrequited love, idolizing her kind Dr. John Graham, but fortifies herself against it and is able to be happy for him when he finds a better match. She then falls in love with M. Paul in whom she recognizes faults. Like Jane, I think, though she is less forthcoming about it, Lucy is able to be herself more when confronted with M. Paul’s comparative rudeness. She finds empty, polite social conventions stifling. But I will say that I am not a huge fan of M. Paul. I don’t like someone who yells so easily. The scene where Lucy is the only one who could brave interrupting M. Paul while he was teaching and accidentally broke his glasses was absolutely adorable, but that was one of the only times I felt their chemistry. Otherwise, I don’t think he treated Lucy particularly well. But I didn’t dislike him enough that their connection ruined my enjoyment of the novel.
The most annoying part of reading this is the fact that I know maybe two words of French, and all of the French translations were in the Notes section in the very back of my edition, so I kept having to flip back and forth. And there is a lot of French in this novel.
So now I have read all of the Brontë works in my possession and I have the rest coming in the mail. So far, my ranking is:
- Jane Eyre
- Villette
- Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Wuthering Heights
I feel like my rankings of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are easy and obvious considering my past reviews, but why did I rank Villette higher than Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I think I respect the purpose and plot of Tenant more, but I enjoyed reading Villette more, presumably because I can relate to Charlotte’s female protagonists so deeply. And I think, ultimately, I find Charlotte’s ability to put complex feelings into writing stronger than Anne’s.
