Villette
{{Villette}}
Basic Info
- Author: Charlotte Bronte
- Year: 1853
- Type: primary 1
Summary (brief)
-Lucy Snowe is clearly queer and, as a girlie in the Victorian era, doesn't have the rhetoric or social framework to even explain her feelings. Some sort of personal tragedy alienates her from her family but we don't know what. I thought maybe she confessed her queerness, like she must have done to the priest. It was apparently a confession of loneliness but again only because Lucy doesn't have the framework to describe her sexuality. She also describes every woman she sees with microscopic detail and doesn't even really pay attention to men. She gawks at a painting of Cleopatra and then calls her fat. Ginevra doesn't love Lucy back. Lucy thinks she's seeing the ghost of a nun but it turns out to be Ginevra's boyfriend sneaking around in a nun costume trying to get with Ginevra. There was also a cross-dressing scene where Lucy got to passionately act out her feelings towards Ginevra.
Major Themes
- loneliness, sexuality, gender
Key Passages / Quotes
Quote 1
quote: "as I gazed at the blue armchair, it appeared to grow familiar; so did a certain scroll couch, and not less so the round centre table, with a blue covering bordered with autumn-tinted foliage; and, above all, two little footstools with worked covers, and a small ebony-framed chair,:"
page:: 197
themes:: woman-as-house
Genre Notes
-unreliable narrator Lucy Snowe lies to the reader, to other characters, and to herself; mostly lies of omission.
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
-Lucy Snowe - hates the color pink and loves women secretly
-Ginevra - Lucy's crush who she speaks about judgmentally yet obsessively. Dr. John Graham is in love with her for a bit but she's too shallow.
-Paul - Lucy and Paul planned to have what I would suspect to be a Lavender wedding but he dies at sea after buying Lucy her own school. Best case scenario for her. But it's annoying that she had to rely on the patriarchy to provide this for her. But in a way he's an ally.
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?