Book: Villette by Charlotte Bronte

I bought this book in a rare English bookstore in China several years ago where I was understandably excited just to see books in English at all, much less a book by an author I recognized and liked because I'd read Jane Eyre (by the same author).  Why it took me this many years since buying Villette to actually read it, I'll never know.

Jane Eyre has been in my top three favorite books for years.  I always found Jane Eyre as a person to be much more real to me than anyone like Elizabeth Bennett (sorry, Jane Austen fans).  Jane has a vibrant inner thought life and experiences a wide range of emotions, which she doesn't always feel free to express.  She is responsible for herself and feels keenly her lack of connections in the world.  The main character in Villette, Lucy Snowe, shares these characteristics with Jane Eyre, which is likely why I've felt so able to relate to them both.  While themes of Lucy's story share several similarities to Jane's, their stories are also quite different.

During the first half of Villette, once I had a fair amount of information about the characters, I found myself imagining I could predict what was going to happen.  I was right about one major aspect of the plot, but was surprised by so many other things that happened along the way that being right about that one thing was eclipsed by my continual surprise.  It made me wonder if I'd read Jane Eyre at an older age (I'm sure I'd read it for the first time by middle school), if I would have experienced more surprise throughout the unfolding of the plot, as I did while reading Villette.  Aspects of Villette also portray a sense of mystery, strangeness, and other-worldliness that is not fully grasped until much much later in the story.  In the meantime, the emotion it evokes and the portent it seems to be hovers like a dark fog in the background.

One reason I like Charlotte Bronte so much is the people in her novels come alive in my mind.  Different aspects of their character and motivations are displayed at different times, making them seem like real people who have good days and bad days, sometimes are reserved and calm and other times talkative or angry, passionately happy or terribly lonely, and who you can't fully know all at once until you get to know them more throughout the story.  Yet more reasons I relate to them, I suppose!  Another reason I enjoy Charlotte Bronte is her stories show how life continually changes.  Real life stories don't turn out the way we would expect, or the way we would write it if we wanted it to turn out how we want.  This leaves her books surrounded by an air of hopefulness, reminding us that nothing is set in stone, everything can change.

I don't think I should disclose any of the plot, because it's better to be surprised.  If you like Jane Eyre, I would say, just read Villette, without even reading anything else about it.  And if you do, I'd be very interested in discussing the ending!  And, as if you need another reason to read Villette, an author I like very much, Kazuo Ishiguro (author of The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and When We Were Orphans, to name a few), who very recently won the Nobel Prize in literature, names Charlotte Bronte as his favorite author and says, "[to her] I owe my career, and a lot else besides, to Jane Eyre and Villette."

On a humorous note, a line I enjoyed in the book: "Happiness is not a potato."  Why not?  You'll have to read it and find out. :)