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. However in spite of her apparent desire for adventure, Lucy finds 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