I was not keen on re-reading Villette by Charlotte Brontë. After falling head over heels in love with Jane Eyre in high school, I gave Villette a chance on Spring Break in college. I remember liking it, but not loving it, and it’s possible the logic of “the classic met me at the right time” can be reversed here: maybe Villette met me at the wrong time. Maybe poolside in Florida when you’re 20 was not the time to read Villette. 

But that’s surely what everyone is reading by the pool! You’re thinking. I know, that’s why you’re here.

When someone in my book club proposed this book, my nose crinkled a bit like I heard someone suggest a Danielle Steele novel. That’s not fair at all to this book, I know, but I was just not looking to re-read this particular classic, of all of the ones I’ve read. You’re going to suggest Villette and not Wuthering Heights?? I did not vote for the book, but alas, I do believe in democracy in the micro sense. Villette prevailed. 

I felt I had to read the book from my old copy, which was faithfully waiting for me at my parent’s house. She’s kind of an ugly, squat Signet Classic, but the print is a comfortable size and she fits nicely in my bag. Haters would say “but she’s got a nice personality!” 

I open Villette on my commute to work and begin to read. 

And I keep reading…

And I keep reading…

Okay…Villette is actually…engaging this time around? Because I don’t think I could have said the same when I read it 6 or so years ago? 

What about it now is more engaging? 

Well for one, I was not trying to dodge being splashed by kids doing cannonballs by the pool, that does wonders for your concentration. 

But it’s also because Lucy made a lot more sense the second time around. 

Lucy Snowe is our protagonist of Villette and a Goodreads member said it right in their review when they said “Lucy Snowe doesn’t care about you.” Oh it’s so true: Lucy does not give a shit whether you listen to her story. Reading this story the first time around, I was a little put off by her. She’d let you into her mind, but not her heart, and when she gave you the slightest glimpse of that stony palace, the story would shift to another place and time and you were back at ground zero with her.

Fool me once Brontë, shame on you, fool me twice you won’t.

Once I was re-reading the book I remembered how Lucy would toy with me so callously, but I wasn’t falling for it this time around. I paid particular attention to when she would begin to reveal more of herself than she wanted and what we would shift to instead. I also have gotten much better, thanks to extensive reading, at uncovering subtext. What used to be something that had to be actively mined from layers of earth was now sprouting like crocuses. Lucy never had to say “I’m in love with Dr. John Graham Bretton” this time around. Girl, c’mon. We know. 

Lucy, then, had so much more depth and was much more satisfying to engage with. Instead of finding her cold and withholding, I actually found her to be someone of intense feeling and was probably extremely sensitive. She had to steel herself against the world that seemed not to care for her. 

Or that she thought did not care for her. 

Lucy so often thought she had not a friend in the world because (due to whatever reason, she does not let us know) she had to leave England and make her own way. Not easy for a woman in any time, but certainly not in Victorian England. Even as she watches her friends participate in the Villette’s festivities towards the end of the novel, she is content to sit on the sidelines and not make her presence known. She overhears her friends say they wished she was there and that they think well of her, and those words alone will emotionally sustain her for days, weeks, maybe months to come. So often we see Lucy go without: she goes without company, without sunshine, food. She deprives herself so fully of living that she forgets how to. But when she receives small tokens from friends (a kind but innocuous letter from Graham, a pamphlet from M. Paul), she embraces them like they are crown jewels and learns to live again little by little. She has friends if only she reaches out beyond the locked doors of her heart and lets them in.

And honestly, same. 

No, not “same” in that I know what it’s like to be this emotionally repressed. Luckily I grew up in a society that allowed for a more full range of expressed emotion. But I can still relate to where Lucy is coming from. I am someone that does not like to burden anyone with my negative feelings or troubles, who is scared of getting their feelings hurt so they keep them inside (who did I “like” in seventh grade? Not a soul but my journal, a veritable “crush graveyard,” knew the answer to that question then, and the world will never know). So I felt for Lucy infinitely more this go around. Which made me feel for Charlotte all the more, knowing she based a lot of the novel off her own life. I think to know Lucy, and perhaps Jane from Jane Eyre, is to scratch the surface of Charlotte.

That brings me to M. Paul Emanuel, the star instructor at Madame Beck’s school, who is based on a (married) teacher that Brontë fell in love with. 

……

You know when your friend tells you they’re going out with someone and they make you guess and you can’t for the life of you figure out who it is, and then she tells you and there’s an awkward silence and you go, “....wait….him?” 

Yeah, that’s how it felt when Lucy and M. Paul wind up together. Chiefly because I HATED him when the book started. As soon as he came back on the scene for this second go-around I remembered how much I disliked him, but I did not remember how the book ended. 

So was I in for a treat. 

Maybe I need to see a BBC mini series version of Villette, but I cannot help but think that M. Paul looks like a tiny, pointy man. Like Lucy is probably only 5’5”, at most, but this man must be even tinier than her. Sort of like Mr. Needful from Rick and Morty, that’s seriously what comes to mind when I imagine him. 

And his moods were even harder to keep track of. One moment he was sweet, the next he was flying into a rage and calling Lucy a hussy for wearing a red dress (it was pink, you dingus). Lucy was also confused by him for most of the novel, but I knew, I knew she was going to fall for him. He was so outwardly mercurial, she was so repressed, can I make it any more obvious. She just had to fall for someone who was literally the human embodiment of dramatically swishing a cape down the steps of a haunted castle while crying “Mon Dieu!” 

This man was d-r-a-m-a-t-i-c and I truly couldn’t stand him. I knew he was going to make my girl Lucy upset every time he came into the room, and sure enough, he always found some way to make her cry. Even right up until the end, when he avoids her the week before he’s supposed to go away to the West Indies, but surprise! he was hiding from her because he was creating a new school for her to run and didn’t want to spoil the surprise, oh isn’t he just a wonderful guy! And he proposes! Even though throughout the whole book he can’t shut up about how much he hates English people and tries to get Lucy to convert to Catholicism when she makes it clear she wants to stay a Protestant. Even getting that weird priest involved in it. 

Honestly Lucy, expand your circle, bestie. I know you couldn’t get the hot doctor, but you could have done better than M. Paul. I know this might be a “Mr. Darcy” case, where we don’t like him in the beginning but he winds up being a great, but perhaps socially awkward, guy, but no. I just couldn’t come around to M. Paul, even if he did live in poverty so he could provide for the family of a dead nun he was in love with. 

These fucking Victorians, man. 

A long winded review for a long winded book, I digress. This book was four stars when I read it in college, and it remains one of the most solid four star books in my collection. I think what Brontë was able to do in terms of psychological literature is amazing. Those who love the “no plot, just vibes” type of books would perhaps like this, if they can get behind “some plot, a lot of emotional repression and psychological angst.” If you like Victorian angst, oh you bet you’ll like this one, but the angst is not as sexy as Jane Eyre. I’d say this is more dark academic-type angst. Of course, Brontë’s prose is ornate and beautiful, if not at times too much so. Lucy really liked to dwell on the profound movements of Heaven when she was really just trying to say “Good morning” to Dr. John and it was a bit much at times. Girl, please go touch some grass.

And M. Paul, oh M. Paul. This book sadly would never reach five stars for me as long as he is in it. Maybe a film adaptation with Stanley Tucci starring this character would change my mind, but I don’t think even his talents could save this weird little man. I am not looking forward to being part of another book club where this gets picked and I need to meet him all over again.

But if someone suggests Villette again, I’m not going to hide my feelings, I’ll tell them we should try Wuthering Heights for the millionth time, again.