Charlotte Bronte’s most popular novel is Jane Eyre, but Villette is by far her most complex, and my favorite. This near-psychedelic maze of a novel charts the narrator Lucy’s survival in a foreign country, her challenges as a working woman, and the price of solitude – illness, hallucinations, and mental breakdown – when she lives alone at the school during the two-month vacation. Not all readers like quiet, reserved Lucy,: in fact, Elizabeth Gaskell told Charlotte that she disliked Lucy.
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And yet I don’t see her as cold or dull. Lucy is a sweet but deeply flawed woman defined by a fierce intelligence, Protestantism, quiet charm, and hidden passion. She is not without bitterness, but that is born of circumstances and poverty. In the 19th century she navigates the uncertain career path of an unskilled woman. Marriage is one of life’s goals but not for her: with her parents’ death she fell out of the middle class into poverty.

it is not entirely different today: single women in our society are expected to marry, and often face a brutal struggle to find a “mate,” as opposed to bad blind dates. (Jill Bialosky writes about this in her brilliant memoir, Poetry Will Save Your Life.) Many women, like Lucy, still live on bare-bones salaries, because women’s salaries tend to be lower than men’s. Lucy is lucky to find a teaching job, but must live in the dormitory of the school. The students are rich; the teachers, ironically, are very poor, and cannot afford a home. But Madame Beck, the headmistress and owner of the school, values Lucy’s teaching and treats her like an equal.

In her twenties, Lucy has not given up on marriage; she has never dreamed of it at all. As an exceptional teacher at a girls’ school in Villette (Bronte’s fictional name for Brussels, where she herself went to school and taught for a few years), Lucy is a realist about her situation. But she is surrounded by talk of marriage. Her fellow teachers and her students dream about love and marriage. She knows it is unlikely that her colleagues will have the opportunity to marry.

But, first and foremost, Lucy’s plain appearance defines her in people’s eyes. Is she as homely as she thinks she is? This is not a problem for Charlotte Bronte’s other heroines. In Jane Eyre, Jane attracts the rich, rakish Mr. Rochester. In Shirley, Caroline and Shirley are both attractive, and both marry attractive men. Lucy does not value looks, but at the same time knows that her future might be different if she were better-looking. Eventually she does have a boyfriend. More later, but a hint: she might be better off without.

At the school, different classes of women – the students being the upper class, the employees the lower – have completely different expectations in terms of beauty and fashion. The students are well-dressed, but Lucy cannot afford fashionable clothing, nor does she wish to wear it. She is mousy, and her dresses are gray. She considers a simple, light pink dress, given her by her godmother, almost too bold to wear in public. She wants to disappear into the woodwork, to be unseen.

Contrast this with one of her students – a beautiful, vain English girl, Ginevra Fanshawe– who constantly talks about her clothes and her two boyfriends, whom she plays off against each other. Ginevra has persuaded one of her suitors – the one who can’t afford it, Dr. John – to give her gifts of of clothing and jewelry. She also regards her rich uncle as a bank. But however much Ginevra has, it is never enough. Fashion leaves her ravening for more.

Although Lucy finds Ginevra exasperating, Dr. John, the school doctor, is madly in love with her. Lucy learns all about it when she has a nervous breakdown, collapses on a street at night, and is discovered by Dr. John and a priest, who take her to Dr. John’s house to recover. And there she meets her godmother, Mrs. Bretton: it seems that Mrs. Bretton and her son, Dr. John, lost their money and moved to Villette, where John’s medical practice is thriving. Lucy and Dr. John become close friends, but he constantly praises Ginevra, and talks about how much Lucy must like and admire this sweet, naive girl. His delusions irritate her, and at one point she snaps at him. She has a sharp tongue, and his feelings are hurt.

But at a concert hall Lucy has a rude awakening: she is plain, perhaps plainer than she’d thought. She sees three fpeople walking toward her, and it turns out it is the reflection in a a mirror of the Brettons and herself: she is startled and disappointed when she recognizes herself in the pink dress. She had hoped that perhaps it would transform her, but no. And she has strong feelings for Dr. John, who does not return them. At one point he says that if she had been a boy they would have been brothers, friends who agreed about everything.

Eventually Lucy does have a boyfriend: an “absurd little man,” as she calls him, who teaches at the school. M. Paul is a fanatical Catholic. Educated by Jesuits, he spies on Lucy and others at the school. He goes through her drawers. He constantly harangues her and criticizes her. He reduces both Lucy and his students to tears. People are terrified of him, though Lucy staunchly ignores him when he oversteps. As the book goes on, he finally shows kindness to her.

Will Lucy marry him? Or not?

Parts of Villette are loosely – very loosely – autobiographical. Charlotte taught at a school in Brussels and fell in love with the married headmaster. But neither Emily nor Anne married, and Charlotte married a curate only after her sisters’ deaths. Charlotte died a year after her marriage of an intestinal infection while she was pregnant.