Lucy Snowe, in flight from an unhappy past, leaves England and finds work as a teacher in Madame Beck´s school in ´Villette´. Strongly drawn to the fiery autocratic schoolmaster Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Lucy is compelled by Madame Beck´s jealous interference to assert her right to love and be loved. Based in part on Charlotte Bronte´s experience in Brussels ten years earlier, Villette (1853) is a cogent and dramatic exploration of a woman´s response to the challenge of a constricting social environment. Its deployment of imagery comparable in power to that of Emily Bronte´s Wuthering Heights, and its use of comedy, ironic or exuberant, in the service of an ultimately sombre vision, make Villette especially appealing to the modern reader.

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