Charlotte Bronte: Villette (May 2022)

Written in 1853, Villette was Charlotte Bronte’s final novel. It is based on her experience of teaching in Brussels.

The protagonist, virtually penniless, is struggling alone with few choices open to her. We do not know why she has not received any help from her godmother or the family of the elderly woman she cared for who had intended to leave her some money. Was she too proud to ask or did it simply not occur to them?

There had been a catastrophe with her family, the reader assumes they are dead but we are not told the details.

Learning more about the heroine’s background might have helped to bring the book to life but, as it was, nobody in the group enjoyed it. Most of us found we dreaded picking it up again to continue reading it.

For us, Villette lacked structure, sentences were so long and convoluted that they needed rereading to try to make sense of them. Added to this, much of the dialogue was in quite difficult French so we had to consult the notes which interrupted the flow of the novel.

We had good intentions of studying some neglected classics but Villette was not a success with us and we awarded it 1/5.

Note: Villette is available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg.