a pirated french translation of villette

i post too much about the brontës so i created a side blog. main @helenvaughans

[helenvaughans]

I WOULD HAVE DONE TONS OF COCAINE WITH YOU, AND KEPT YOU ALIVE FOREVER.

[mugueteva]

[petaltexturedskies]

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

[doulie]

wuthering heights, illustrated by isabella mazzanti.

[brontepilld]

A book blog for moms, with reviews of classic, vintage, historical, YA, and contemporary fiction

What always strikes me in this novel-- one of my favorites!-- is that I'm led into Lucy Snowe's affection for a hero who's unlikely, if not absolutely unlikable.  A plain, short, middle-aged teacher at a school for girls in fictional Villette (Belgium), M. Paul Emanuel rages at his pupils and colleagues; takes everything personally; manipulates; and often shows an astonishing lack of consideration for others, as when he locks Lucy into a roach-infested attic for four hours on a hot summer day so that she can rescue his stage play from imminent disaster.  Not exactly endearing, right?

Oddly enough, wrong.  Under Bronte's influence, somehow I can't help but smile at his childish ego-- just as I find Mr. Rochester impossibly cute when he's being, well, impossible!  Something about the emotional transparency and self-centeredness of these men becomes so appealing once they betray a weakness for the heroine...  Plus, they spar so well with protagonists (like Lucy Snowe and Jane Eyre) who don't take their hot tempers and jealous antics at all seriously!  Lucy laughs at M. Paul before falling in love with him, and indeed-- like Jane-- indulges in a few mind-games of her own at his expense.  To Lucy, M. Paul isn't frightening or abrasive; his haranguing is "piquant" and "better than music."  He stimulates.

In Villette, too, there's the added pleasure of knowing that, unlike Rochester, Paul Emanuel isn't rich, isn't tall and "athletic," and doesn't have the dangerous allure of a repentant sinner.  (On the contrary, he's a pretty serious Catholic.)  In other words, Bronte doesn't have much conventionally "romantic" material to work with here-- yet she irresistibly draws me into her own enchantment with this character, a stand-in for the object of her own (unrequited) infatuation. Falling for M. Paul feels so right because it affirms that one doesn't have to have looks, money, status, or even spot-on social skills in order to inspire an overwhelming passion.   Human?  Flawed?  Occasionally ridiculous?  Guys, you're still candidates for the role of romantic hero, as Heger found-- to his chagrin.

[brontepilld]

[patrickspens-deactivated2023122]

HEATH CLIFF knuckle tats

[kuutamosonaatti]

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996)

[kuutamosonaatti]

To Walk Invisible (2016) | dir. Sally Wainwright

[twochildreninamoteldemo]

Society if Emily Brontë never wrote wuthering heights

[sheafalcon]

Villette, Charlotte Brontë

[raspberryzingaaa]

Ok so Charlotte Brontë got it

[farosdaughter]

“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”

Happy Villette anniversary! Charlotte Brontë’s final novel was published on this day in 1853.🪶💌

[saimusage]

Some photo stills of "Villette" 1970 TV version featuring a scene where Lucy, Monsieur Paul and the students are having a picnic. Judy Parfitt plays as Lucy (top picture) and Paul Jeffrey as M. Paul (bottom picture; left).

"Villette" 1970 version is one of known TV adaptations based on a same title of a novel written by Charlotte Brontë and it was produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is said that all of its five episodes are currently lost and the only proof of existence are some of its photo stills available in BBC Archive.

[bookmatter]

Villette, Charlotte Brontë

[aregebidan]

starting to get the feeling that m paul could absolutely destroy rochester in a fistfight and quite possibly match heathcliff blow for blow

[maculategiraffe]

I know this kind of falls under unreliable narrator but is there a name for the literary device where the narrator suddenly reveals a crucial piece of information to the reader out of nowhere like it's nbd. like in villette when she doesn't tell us who the doctor is or that she recognized him until a hundred pages later. or also in villette when after four hundred pages of paul locking her in attics and yelling at her for looking at paintings she's suddenly like "oh I might not have mentioned that every day he also left little presents in my desk. just books and bonbons and stuff like that, that he thought I might like. I might have forgotten to mention that part. anyway" and just goes on with the story. maybe we should call it the lucy snowe gambit