![]() For one thing, he feared that readers would take a dim view of Lucy for being in love with two men: halfway through the book she transfers her affections from the handsome young Englishman Graham Bretton to Paul Emmanuel (‘Monsieur Paul’), a fellow-teacher at Madame Beck’s Pensionnat in the town of Villette. And I must admit that Villette’s heroine Lucy Snowe initially failed to engage me, perhaps because I was too young when I first read it.Ĭharlotte’s publisher George Smith, who had brought her fame overnight with Jane Eyre, had his own doubts about Villette when he received the manuscript. Not only is Villette a darker book, but the popular image of the Brontës does not readily associate them with a continental girls’ boarding school. ![]() The general reading public has always voted unequivocally for the bestselling Jane Eyre. If Jane Eyre is Pride and Prejudice, Villette is Persuasion. As one of them said, you often come to appreciate it later in life. When an audience vote was taken, the earlier and better-known book won, but only by a small majority the two writers defending Villette had been eloquent in its praise. 40) and Charlotte Brontë’s last novel, Villette. In 2016, in a debate organized by the Brontë Society, a panel of four writers discussed the relative merits of Jane Eyre (see SF no. ![]()
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