Book Review: Villette
Feb. 25th, 2010 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI actually finished Charlotte Bronte's Villette a few weeks ago, but it's taken a while to digest.
It's a beautifully written book, and superbly constructed. Indeed, I think the plotting is better than in Jane Eyre, which occasionally goes off on interesting but ultimately pointless hundred-page meanders. The characters are wonderfully drawn. I think Bronte's main characters were already as well developed as anyone could want a character to be in Jane Eyre, although her secondary characters are a little flat; but in Villette the secondary characters too are lovingly rendered.
Despite these advances in quality, I think it's fairly clear why Jane Eyre is so much more popular than Villette. First, Jane Eyre's romance is much fiercer and more satisfying than Villette's, and there's nothing like a good romance to make a book popular.
Second, Villette is an exceptionally melancholy book. The main character, Lucy Snowe, spends much of the book alone, friendless, trapped in a job and a life she doesn't like. Her pain and her wanderlust are epic and infectious. I kept having to put the book down and go for a walk just to shake it off, because otherwise it hung like a miasma around my shoulders and seeped through my dreams.
One feels a bit of this in Jane Eyre as well, but it's much better contained there.
And finally....
THE ENDING. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE CHARLOTTE BRONTE FOR THIS PURPOSEFULLY AND PERVERSELY CRUEL ENDING. If Bronte wanted a sad ending, fine, just don't have Paul Emmanuel fall in love with Lucy Snowe. The reader is on tenterhooks as it is, whether he will or not (one of the few romance books where its honestly a question whether the leads will get together); it would be eminently believable if he didn't.
But, having had him fall in love with Lucy, it's entirely unfair to snatch that away from her by killing him off in the last three paragraphs. Yes, I know tragic deaths like that occur in real life. No, that doesn't excuse it happening here; it's a nasty bait and switch, an entire book leading up to this gently lovely denouement only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Oh it makes me furious.
So while I can't say I love Villette unreservedly - and I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone going through a tough time in life - it's beautifully, beautifully written, with such exquisitely observed characters, and I'm so glad I read it.
It's a beautifully written book, and superbly constructed. Indeed, I think the plotting is better than in Jane Eyre, which occasionally goes off on interesting but ultimately pointless hundred-page meanders. The characters are wonderfully drawn. I think Bronte's main characters were already as well developed as anyone could want a character to be in Jane Eyre, although her secondary characters are a little flat; but in Villette the secondary characters too are lovingly rendered.
Despite these advances in quality, I think it's fairly clear why Jane Eyre is so much more popular than Villette. First, Jane Eyre's romance is much fiercer and more satisfying than Villette's, and there's nothing like a good romance to make a book popular.
Second, Villette is an exceptionally melancholy book. The main character, Lucy Snowe, spends much of the book alone, friendless, trapped in a job and a life she doesn't like. Her pain and her wanderlust are epic and infectious. I kept having to put the book down and go for a walk just to shake it off, because otherwise it hung like a miasma around my shoulders and seeped through my dreams.
One feels a bit of this in Jane Eyre as well, but it's much better contained there.
And finally....
THE ENDING. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE CHARLOTTE BRONTE FOR THIS PURPOSEFULLY AND PERVERSELY CRUEL ENDING. If Bronte wanted a sad ending, fine, just don't have Paul Emmanuel fall in love with Lucy Snowe. The reader is on tenterhooks as it is, whether he will or not (one of the few romance books where its honestly a question whether the leads will get together); it would be eminently believable if he didn't.
But, having had him fall in love with Lucy, it's entirely unfair to snatch that away from her by killing him off in the last three paragraphs. Yes, I know tragic deaths like that occur in real life. No, that doesn't excuse it happening here; it's a nasty bait and switch, an entire book leading up to this gently lovely denouement only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Oh it makes me furious.
So while I can't say I love Villette unreservedly - and I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone going through a tough time in life - it's beautifully, beautifully written, with such exquisitely observed characters, and I'm so glad I read it.
