Villette

Villette is probably Charlotte Bronte's most serious novel. It is set in a fictional country in Europe, based on Belgium. The heroine is Lucy Snowe, an impoverished girl of good birth, who spends her young days being passed around relatives. Lucy lives for a time with Mrs Bretton, a relative who has a charming, good hearted son, John Graham. Mrs Bretton also takes in a little girl, Paulina De Bassompierre, whose father has to go abroad. The child is very sensitive, and grows fond of Graham. After a time, Lucy moves on and loses touch with the Brettons. She get a job as a companion but her employer dies. She has led a very sheltered life but she decides to go abroad and seek a job at a foreign school. She does not take to foreign life, remaining very much the kind of Briton who thinks themselves superior to foreigners. She is a staunch Protestant. She does not like Madame Beck, who runs the school, believing that she spies of her pupils, and that this is a fault of all Catholics. M/F