jethrien

Title: Villette
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Genre: Classic literature
Thingummies: 2.5

Synopsis: Jane Eyre clone teaches English in pseudo-Brussels, falls in love with problematic dudes.

Thoughts: The afterword makes a fine case that this novel is a rebellious, ground-breaking, proto-feminist tract in which the heroine rises above prejudices against her gender, religion, physical appearance, class, and country of origin. Virginia Woolf loved it and thought it was Bronte's best novel. And the case can certainly be made. If nothing else, I have to respect the integrity of the ending, which eschews the fairy tale of Jane Eyre for a more realistic end for a girl with no prospects but a lot of self-respect.

That said, there's a reason everyone loves Jane Eyre and nobody reads Villette. Lucy is kind of insufferable. And just about every other character is totally insufferable. Not that there are a lot of characters. The level of coincidence here challenges Dickens--there is not a single character, I swear, that's introduced that doesn't come back. Random people from her childhood all end up in Villette. The flighty girl from her passage to England, the guy she runs into fresh off the boat, the hooligans who chase her down the street, the old harridan she's sent to on an errand; everyone turns up two and three and four times. Everyone knows everyone, even when there's no reason for a connection. It's ridiculous.

The climax occurs because she's accidentally drugged and wanders around in the middle of the night in a dreamlike state, accidentally stumbles on everyone ever mentioned in the plot, and somehow miraculously puts together the various plot threads.

And the love interest. Oy. I hate him. He starts out kind of cute, in an awful way--he torments her the way you'd expect from a six-year-old with a crush. Oh honey, he's only picking on you because he likes you. I guess she eventually tames his rampant misogyny and anti-Protestantism--he ends up supporting her dreams and not asking her to convert. But only after spending three quarters of the book ridiculing her. He's a control freak. Apparently with a heart of gold, but a control freak nonetheless. I know Bronte got married near the end of her life--I kind of wonder what her husband was like, given her paragons of romantic impulses. At least Rochester was sexy in his totally-assholic way. M. Paul is just a short, ugly, dorky jerkface. Sorry, towering achievement of Gothic literature--I just can't root for this romance.