Full Description
Charlotte Brontë's contemporary George Eliot wrote of Villette, "There is something almost preternatural in its power." The deceptive stillness and security of a girls' school provide the setting for this 1853 novel, Brontë's last. Modelled on Brontë's own experiences as a student and teacher in Brussels, Villette is the sombre but engrossing story of Lucy Snowe, an unmarried Englishwoman making her way in a culture deeply foreign to her. The heroine's relationships with the fiery professor M. Paul, the cool Englishman Dr. John, and the school's powerful headmistress, Madame Beck, are described in her compelling and enigmatic first-person narration.
This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction by Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky. The many contextual documents include contemporary writings on surveillance and espionage, anti-Catholicism, and working women, as well as letters describing Brontë's own time in Brussels.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Charlotte Brontë: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Villette
Appendix A: Brontë and Brussels
Letter from Charlotte Brontë to Emily Brontë, 2 September 1843
Letter from Charlotte Brontë to Constantin Heger, 8 January 1845 (translation)
Letter from Charlotte Brontë to Constantin Heger, 18 November 1845 (translation)
Appendix B: Storms in the Bible
Mark 4: 35-41
Acts 27: 1, 9-16, 18-31, 39-44
Appendix C: Women and Love
From Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Daughters of England (1842)
From Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Olive (1850)
From Harriet Martineau, Review of Villette. Daily News (3 February 1853)
From William Makepeace Thackeray, letter to Lucy Baxter (11 March 1853)
Appendix D: Women and Work
From Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England (1839)
From Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Letter from Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 24 June 1851
From Harriet Taylor Mill, "The Enfranchisement of Women." Westminster Review, July 1851
Letter from Charlotte Brontë to Elizabeth Gaskell, 20 September 1851
From Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
Appendix E: Surveillance and Espionage
The Post Office Espionage Case, 1844-45
"Opening Letters at the Post Office." Hansard: House of Lords, 17 June 1844
"Alleged Post-Office Espionage," The Times, 25 June 1844
The Times, 7 August 1844
The Times, 5 June 1845
From "Reflections Suggested by the Career of the Late Premier." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,January 1847
From Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (1857)
From Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Aurora Floyd (1863)
Appendix F: Anti-Catholicism in England
From Patrick Brontë, "The Maid of Killarney; or Albion and Flora: A Modern Tale; In Which Are Interwoven someCursory Remarks on Religion and Politics" (1818)
From Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, as Exhibited in a Narrative of her Sufferings during a residence of five years as a novice, two as a black nun in the Hotel DieuNunnery at Montreal (1836)
From Thomas De Quincey, "Maynooth." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, May 1845
From Charles Neaves, "Priests, Women and Families." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, May 1845
"Papal Aggression"
From Nicholas Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster. A Pastoral Letter, "From Outside the Flaminian Gate," 7October 1850
The Times, 14 October 1850
Select Bibliography
