Villette

1853, 1987 Signet Classic edition
Charlotte Brontë
Villette
Original price $4.95, bought used for 95 cents
Worn paperback
B-

This novel is mostly set in a fictionalised version of Brussels (the title being ironic, as if a capital city is a little village).  The setting is what I like best, although I also enjoy most of the characters and, as usual with Brontë, the first-person narration.  Unfortunately, also as usual with Brontë, the love interest and romance don't work.  M. Paul is not as repellent as a Moore brother but he's not as tolerable as Mr. Rochester.  He spends most of the novel bullying the heroine, to the point that he even locks her in an overheated attic to rehearse an acting role he's pressured her into taking.  Not only is Lucy Snowe more passive than Jane Eyre, but even Fanny Price would've protested at this.  Lucy mostly seems amused.  At some point, they decide that they're friends, so they swear eternal friendship, which turns to love.  They'd marry in the end, but he dies at sea.  Or does he?

It is this ambiguous ending that rescues the novel from a C+.  People who are more romantic than I am can imagine a Happily Ever After.  (I am generally a matchmaker of fictional characters, ever since as a little girl I imagined Heidi grew up to marry Peter the goatherd, but I have my limits.)  And people who hope that Lucy is a happy spinster schoolteacher, can believe that M. Paul is out of her life for good.

A note about this edition.  There are a shocking number of typos for a professional publication, often of the letter-dropping sort, like "vice" for "voice" and "she" for "shed," although in one case I had to shake my head at "misserable."  Shame on you, Signet Classic!