"Villette" by Charlotte Bronte

I don't know if anyone else is going to use this site to share information on other texts they read over the Easter break, but as everyone's going to read this at some point I thought I may as well.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Aspects of the gothic present (or absent) in "Vilette"

"Villette," by Charlotte Bronte, is based on Charlotte's time in Brussels, although she fictionalises the city to "Villette" and the country of Belgium to Labassecour. The protagonist, Lucy Snowe, stoically undergoes trials whislt watching other people gain success and love, and the ending is ambiguously happy or tragic.

There are no wild landscapes, as the action of the novel is set inside a city, but it does have a very old, crooked tree which Snowe nicknames "Methusaleh"

The square where the priest lives, has a church whose "dark ruinous turrets" overlook the houses."Antiquity brooded over this region"

Religious concepts/settings are definitely used in Vilette. The school in which Snowe lives is an old convent which is said to be haunted by a nun who was buried alive. There is a conflict throughout the book between Snowe's Protestantism and the Catholicism of the inhabitants of Villette. The priest, Pere Silas, starts off as Lucy's ally, and a kind ear to her troubles, but soon becomes a barrier between her and the (Jesuit) man she loves. There is oe particularly unnerving scene when one of Snowe's very young students comes up to her desk and tells her she's going to hell.

In Villette, as in Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, fear and depression lead to "nervous disorders." Lucy is abandoned with a mentally disabled child whilst pining and this causes extreme depression - she ends up going slightly mad and runs around Villette, before being rescued by Pere Silas who takes her to the doctor's. This is again repeated later when she is sneakily sedated by the headmistress of the school - but the drugs go wrong and produce in Snowe a fevered, semi-hallucinatory state, "excited from head to foot" so she runs out of the school and goes wandering, spying on people she knows. Paul Emmanuel is constantly portrayed as irrationally grumpy and prone to violent outbursts of irriation at anyone - until we discover his seret other life! There are plenty of other examples of extreme emotion. For example, the young Paulina on being left behind by her travelling father:

she moped,: no grown person could have performed that uncheering business better...she seemed growing old and unerathly

The supernatural and ghostly - the school is supposedly hauted by a nun who has been buried alive, but the visions that Lucy and Paul Emmanuel have have a slightly more mundane reason behind them.

Darkness, shadow and decay are seen in the alleyway that Lucy has to clear to sit in it, for privacy.

Exotic and Oriental, travel. Whilst France and the Low Countries may not, at first, seem obviously exotic, the culture clash, and the foreign language (which Lucy is not educated in prior to moving to Villette) pose many probelms which Lucy must overcome. In additon, the final obstacle to Lucy's happiness is that Paul Emmanuel must go to the West Indies to sort out his dependent's estate.

Terror, but not horror, tends to come in the shape of the ghostly nun, or the extreme opression of the environment.

Isolation and lonelinessis a major theme. The first example is when Paulina is left by her father. Then Lucy is abandoned by her father dying, and must live as an old lady's companion. Then she is isolated by her inability to speak the language of Villette, then by her religious differences. Then she is literally isolated and alone as every teacher and student goes off on holiday and leaves her alone with a quiet servant and a mentally disabled child in the school. Lucy is an outsider.

The conflict between Rationalism (reason) and Romaticism (imagination) is best expressed in chapter 21 (Reaction):
"But if I feel, may I never express?"
"Never!" declared Reason...Reason may be right; yet no wonder we are glad to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to imagination...depsite the terrible revenge that awaits our return...reason is as vindictive as the devil.

Deception and espionage is a key theme in "Vilette" as well. Everyone goes through everyone elses stuff - espionage is used as control, and people have to find ingenious ways (like dressing up as a nun) to defy this.