"Villette"
By Charlotte Bronte
The gaps in my acquaintance with English literature are few, but I have largely avoided the overwrought Bronte sisters (with "Jane Eyre" as the shining exception), so much so that I was surprised to learn that "Villette" is not the name of the title character, but the town in which the story takes place.
I quit reading this novel on page 138--with several hundred pages yet to go--because my patience with looking up end-note translations of French dialogue just didn't seem worth it given the book so far.
The novel opens well enough, with the introduction of Lucy Snow and her friends and relations in England. These people drop out of the picture somewhat precipitously (I presume I would have met them again had I bothered to continue reading).
Inexplicably left penniless, Lucy's stint as paid companion to an elderly lady ends when the old bag dies before providing a promised pension. Acting on an offhand comment that Continental Europeans sometimes seek English governesses for their children in order to teach them the language, Lucy sets sail for a town called Villette, which seems to hover between Flanders and France, where she falls in as governess and then English teacher for the sneaky Madame Beck who spends a lot of time going through her employees' desks and wardrobes and wears "silent slippers," the better to spy on people.
Madame Beck is a great character, but Lucy treats here with a kind of insufferably smug English Protestantism. There is a lot of criticism of Catholicism, Catholic education, Continental childrearing, and French provincialism in general (except for the lovingly described food and generally fine weather).
There are also a lot of wearying descriptions of clothes.
About the time I ducked out of the story, a love intrigue seemed to be developing between one of the school's coquettes and, possibly, the dishy Dr. John, an English physician. I just really didn't care.
No comments:
Post a Comment