Villette - Brontë, Charlotte , 9789176056943

Villette was Charlotte Brontë's fourth novel. It was preceded by the posthumously published The Professor, her first, and then by Jane Eyre and Shirley. Its main character, Lucy Snowe, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture and religion different from her own, and falls in love with a man (Paul Emanuel) whom she cannot marry. Her experiences result in a breakdown but eventually she achieves independence and fulfilment through running her own school. A substantial amount of the novel's dialogue is in the French language. Its main themes include isolation, how such a condition can be borne, and the internal conflict brought about by social repression of individual desire. Villette marked Charlotte's return to writing from a first-person perspective (that of Lucy Snowe); the technique she had used