Charlotte Bronte

Villette Annotated Charlotte Bronte

Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Bronte. The novel is initially set in the English countryside, and later follows Lucy Snow to the fictional Belgian town of Villette, a Gothic town where the majority of the action takes place. Villette is modelled upon the city of Brussels and is set in the fictional kingdom of Labassecour. "Labassecour" is the French word for farmyard . CHARACTER NAME IN TIS STORY; Lucy SnoweM. Paul EmanuelDr. John Graham BrettonMrs. BrettonPolly Home/Countess Paulina Mary de BassompierreMr. Home/Count de BassompierreGinevra FanshaweMadame BeckRosinePere SilasJustine MarieVillette begins with its famously passive protagonist, Lucy Snowe, age 14, staying at the home of her godmother Mrs. Bretton in "the clean and ancient town of Bretton", in England. Also in residence are Mrs. Bretton's teenaged son, John Graham Bretton and a young visitor, Paulina Home. For reasons that are not stated, Lucy leaves Mrs. Bretton's home a few weeks after Polly's departure. Some years pass, during which an unspecified family tragedy leaves Lucy without family, home, or means. During the course of the novel, Lucy has three encounters with the figure of a nun - which may be the ghost of a nun who was buried alive on the school's grounds as punishment for breaking her vow of chastity. In a highly symbolic scene near the end of the novel, she discovers the "nun's" habit in her bed and destroys it THEM OF STORY; Villette is noted not so much for its plot as for its acute tracing of Lucy's psychology. The novel, in a gothic setting, simultaneously explores themes of isolation, doubling, displacement and subversion, and each of their impacts upon the protagonist's psyche.