´I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading Villette, a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre.´
George Eliot
Lucy Snowe, in flight from an unhappy past, leaves England and finds work as a teacher in Madame Beck´s school in ´Villette´. Strongly drawn to the fiery autocratic schoolmaster Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Lucy is compelled by Madame Beck´s jealous interference to assert her right to love and be loved.
Based in part on Charlotte Brontë´s experience in Brussels ten years earlier, Villette (1853) is a cogent and dramatic exploration of a woman´s response to the challenge of a constricting social environment. Its deployment of imagery comparable in power to that of Emily Brontë´s Wuthering Heights, and its use of comedyDSironic or exuberantDSin the service of an ultimately sombre vision, make Villette especially appealing to the modern reader.
Readership: For all students, scholars, teachers of Bronte. Also has wide trade appeal.
