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madeleine_jo's review against another edition
4.0
at first i gave this a 3 star rating but had to bump it up after a day. the plot is aggravating to the point i was rushing through it just to finish it. but it’s aggravating in a lifelike way. very frustrating, very low key but complex characters. Yes, i wanted it to be more satisfying and fun but it takes you on a journey. charlotte bronte’s writing always just worms it’s way into my psyche every time and having finished this book i miss it the way you miss a time in your life that kind of sucked at the time but was full of interest. a somewhat grudging 4 stars. absolutely beautiful. i want to reread it in like a decade when i’ve gotten smarter
limeotimeo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
cdhotwing's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
thenovelbook's review against another edition
4.0
Re-read, Victober 2023:
This book gets easier, in a way, with each re-read, but at the same time it absolutely retains its power to wrestle with the reader. Had I read it in my younger years, I’d have been intermittently bored, and then outraged by the ending. Even reading it as an adult, I hated the ambiguous (but let’s be real, not actually ambiguous) ending the first time through. But having become steeped more deeply in the lore of Charlotte Bronte, I’ve come to accept it and even to understand the story choices on some level. I cannot overstate how helpful it is to know some of Charlotte’s own emotional history to make sense of this book. Otherwise all plot points involving M. Paul — and, honestly, Graham too— are just like, what the heck, Charlotte?
——————————————————
Previous review, Victober 2021:
Upon re-reading this, I grew even more attached to Lucy Snowe than before--and this in spite of the fact that she holds you off with an insistence on her nothingness for a full third of the book.
Villette is probably a polarizing read: I can see that some people don't like it. It is not a neat package. It's a book that plays tricks on you. And each of the two men Lucy falls in love with subvert expectations so much that some readers will be disappointed. So don't read this for the plot--don't read it for a love story--don't read it for your favorite tropes. If you're going to read it, read it for the puzzle box character of Lucy Snowe, the girl who seems to have no feelings. Read it patiently, even though you may not like her or understand her at first. She doesn't think she has a lot to say, but she does. And if you know something about Charlotte Bronte's life and loves, so much the better.
Perhaps my Kindle highlights demonstrate at least a little of how powerful a read it is.
-----------------------------------
Original review, 2016:
I went through many different feelings about this story and its central character, and even yet, I can't fix on just one impression. Lucy Snowe repelled me at first; she relates what she observes about others, and in a slightly judgmental manner, but gives no hint about herself. She is not exactly alone in the world, but the people in her life are not her friends. This isn't totally their fault: she seems unknowable.
When she needs to become self-sufficient, she alights at a girls' school to be nursemaid and later teacher. She's scarcely less thorny there. But there's an occasional thaw, a growing vividness within her. And to describe any more of the plot would be to rob the reader of the journey.
As a narrator I found Lucy Snowe to be very difficult to pin down. She's not reliable. You come to realize that she's holding back items from you that she could have shared sooner. Her estimation of the people around her is also pretty suspect, from my point of view. Do I really believe that one man is shallow, while the other is a diamond in the rough? Those Brontes and their Byronic men! Intense, broody, and moody. But always somehow irresistible.
I don't know if I'll reread this...Lucy suffers from major melancholy and fatalism, and, oh that ending--good grief, why? :|
But, anyway, the book is totally atmospheric with that touch of Gothic shiver which one expects from a Bronte, and the fact that it can make you revise your opinion about Lucy and the other characters in each volume...now that's good writing. I unwillingly loved Lucy by the end.
This book gets easier, in a way, with each re-read, but at the same time it absolutely retains its power to wrestle with the reader. Had I read it in my younger years, I’d have been intermittently bored, and then outraged by the ending. Even reading it as an adult, I hated the ambiguous (but let’s be real, not actually ambiguous) ending the first time through. But having become steeped more deeply in the lore of Charlotte Bronte, I’ve come to accept it and even to understand the story choices on some level. I cannot overstate how helpful it is to know some of Charlotte’s own emotional history to make sense of this book. Otherwise all plot points involving M. Paul — and, honestly, Graham too— are just like, what the heck, Charlotte?
——————————————————
Previous review, Victober 2021:
Upon re-reading this, I grew even more attached to Lucy Snowe than before--and this in spite of the fact that she holds you off with an insistence on her nothingness for a full third of the book.
Villette is probably a polarizing read: I can see that some people don't like it. It is not a neat package. It's a book that plays tricks on you. And each of the two men Lucy falls in love with subvert expectations so much that some readers will be disappointed. So don't read this for the plot--don't read it for a love story--don't read it for your favorite tropes. If you're going to read it, read it for the puzzle box character of Lucy Snowe, the girl who seems to have no feelings. Read it patiently, even though you may not like her or understand her at first. She doesn't think she has a lot to say, but she does. And if you know something about Charlotte Bronte's life and loves, so much the better.
Perhaps my Kindle highlights demonstrate at least a little of how powerful a read it is.
-----------------------------------
Original review, 2016:
I went through many different feelings about this story and its central character, and even yet, I can't fix on just one impression. Lucy Snowe repelled me at first; she relates what she observes about others, and in a slightly judgmental manner, but gives no hint about herself. She is not exactly alone in the world, but the people in her life are not her friends. This isn't totally their fault: she seems unknowable.
When she needs to become self-sufficient, she alights at a girls' school to be nursemaid and later teacher. She's scarcely less thorny there. But there's an occasional thaw, a growing vividness within her. And to describe any more of the plot would be to rob the reader of the journey.
As a narrator I found Lucy Snowe to be very difficult to pin down. She's not reliable. You come to realize that she's holding back items from you that she could have shared sooner. Her estimation of the people around her is also pretty suspect, from my point of view. Do I really believe that one man is shallow, while the other is a diamond in the rough? Those Brontes and their Byronic men! Intense, broody, and moody. But always somehow irresistible.
I don't know if I'll reread this...Lucy suffers from major melancholy and fatalism, and, oh that ending--good grief, why? :|
But, anyway, the book is totally atmospheric with that touch of Gothic shiver which one expects from a Bronte, and the fact that it can make you revise your opinion about Lucy and the other characters in each volume...now that's good writing. I unwillingly loved Lucy by the end.
bncarlozzi's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
difficult one to rate for many reasons. Villette is often called Charlotte's masterpiece, though of course, Jane Eyre is read far more. I prefer the latter I think, as far as enjoyment goes (though it's been some years since I read it), but I respect Villette more in a strange way. Lucy Snowe is an unreliable narrator (plot twists in the book, created solely by Lucy's reluctance to share things with the reader right away!), she is visited by nightmarish visions of nuns at night, she is lonely, perhaps even depressed. There were some passages that wonderfully captured loneliness. Strangely, the beginning of the book is probably the strongest. There is almost no plot, we live in her head. I thought I'd enjoy it more; I am a big fan of plotless, internal, slow-burning novels, but I did find chunks of this book boring. That's not so surprising at 657 pages, though. I thoroughly enjoyed the last page and the openness of the novel, especially when so many 19th century novels tied things up so completely. Glad I read it, Charlotte is my favourite Bronte, I think, though it's rather unfair to compare her as she wrote so much more than her sisters. An intelligent, slow novel.
Is there, indeed, such happiness on earth? I asked, as I watched the father, the daughter, the future husband, now united—all blessed and blessing.
Yes; it is so. Without any colouring of romance, or any exaggeration of fancy, it is so. Some real lives do—for some certain days or years—actually anticipate the happiness of Heaven; and, I believe, if such perfect happiness is once felt by good people (to the wicked it never comes), its sweet effect is never wholly lost. Whatever trials follow, whatever pains of sickness or shades of death, the glory precedent still shines through, cheering the keen anguish, and tinging the deep cloud.
michelekendzie's review against another edition
3.0
I listened to this on the podcast The Sleepy Bookshelf so I kept falling asleep and didn’t follow the story well at all.
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
Almost everyone compares Lucy Snowe to Jane Eyre. Given that neither of them thought of herself as beauty, the comparison seems natural too. Jane is more assertive and less observational compared to Lucy if my memory serves. Jane is heroine of her story and you always feel that. She wants to grow and cherishes dreams.
Lucy doesn't - her lack of assertiveness and low opinion of herself means she is a bit like narrator of The Great Gatsby; people are willing to share their secrets with her, be themselves around her and often, to paraphrase her, won't pay any more attention than they would to furniture. This makes her witness to scenes that people would have hidden from a more assertive or selfish person.
As a result, she is like an invisible observer for a great part of the novel. At one point, she is caught off guard when one of character she is observing looks back and takes a notice of her. That said she holds her ground when she feels that someone else's opinion is being imposed upon her (catholic debate apart, there is another example when suitor of a pretty girl wants her to admire the girl like a big brother).
There is a lot more earnest chase in here after what we call stream of consciousness than Jane Eyre and narrator's working life is more visible. Those maybe reasons why Virginia Woolf and George Eliot held it in higher regard than Jane Eyre.
Lots of reviewers seem to think that Jane Eyre had a better plot. I don't. Jane Eyre's is a pretty straight forward story, Villete is a more life-like novel in its lack of a cliche plot (its not another love triangle). No one can call it a product of romantic wishful thinking
- Bronte was writing from lived experience, rather than from imagination. It also seems to have characters are more completely written (Jane Eyre leaves you to guess a lot). That said, the gothic element (the ghost) in villette seemed forced and spoil it a little pointlessly. If you are looking from a feminist element, there is a powerful scene where Lucy is being chased on street by two men - one of earliest such scenes. She even has a love that remains unrequited but gracefully gotten over with - probably a first for heroine of an English novel.
Lucy doesn't - her lack of assertiveness and low opinion of herself means she is a bit like narrator of The Great Gatsby; people are willing to share their secrets with her, be themselves around her and often, to paraphrase her, won't pay any more attention than they would to furniture. This makes her witness to scenes that people would have hidden from a more assertive or selfish person.
As a result, she is like an invisible observer for a great part of the novel. At one point, she is caught off guard when one of character she is observing looks back and takes a notice of her. That said she holds her ground when she feels that someone else's opinion is being imposed upon her (catholic debate apart, there is another example when suitor of a pretty girl wants her to admire the girl like a big brother).
There is a lot more earnest chase in here after what we call stream of consciousness than Jane Eyre and narrator's working life is more visible. Those maybe reasons why Virginia Woolf and George Eliot held it in higher regard than Jane Eyre.
Lots of reviewers seem to think that Jane Eyre had a better plot. I don't. Jane Eyre's is a pretty straight forward story, Villete is a more life-like novel in its lack of a cliche plot (its not another love triangle). No one can call it a product of romantic wishful thinking
- Bronte was writing from lived experience, rather than from imagination. It also seems to have characters are more completely written (Jane Eyre leaves you to guess a lot). That said, the gothic element (the ghost) in villette seemed forced and spoil it a little pointlessly. If you are looking from a feminist element, there is a powerful scene where Lucy is being chased on street by two men - one of earliest such scenes. She even has a love that remains unrequited but gracefully gotten over with - probably a first for heroine of an English novel.
wollstonecrafty's review against another edition
5.0
I cannot believe I waited so long to read this, but I'm simultaneously so glad I read it in my mid-20s. The way Bronte writes Lucy as not only caught between internal desires and external expectations but also the humiliating twinges of self awareness that accompany WANTING something so so badly, is like, heart-rending for me. It's more than the discussion of Jane choosing her heart or her morals or Lucy being distrustful and unlikable - it's the ambivalent emotions that accompany any choice and the constant aching self awareness of how the world sees you when you're a weird woman. As soon as Lucy "wants" something she feels immediate discomfort with the desire and then another layer of compounded discomfort because of these initial negative feelings, feelings that she casts as self pity.
oscar101's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
mphoebeg's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0