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Villette n/e (Oxford World's Classics)

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Mrs. Louisa Bretton: Dr. John Graham Bretton's mother and Lucy's godmother. She is a widow and has "health without flaw, and her spirits of that tone and equality which are better than a fortune to the possessor." She is immensely proud of her son but is not above teasing him. Towards the end of 1850, or in the first days of 1851, she wrote a fresh preface to The Professor, and suggested to her publishers that they should at last venture upon its publication. Dr. John Graham Bretton: A handsome young English gentleman who is a physician. He is the son of Lucy's godmother, Mrs. Bretton. He is described as "cheerful," "benignant," and "bland." Lucy, when young, showed no particular fondness for him. However, when they meet again ten years later, their cool friendship is more than rekindled, and Lucy secretly begins to cherish an affection for him. Graham does not return this affection, however, and calls her "quiet Lucy Snowe" and "a being inoffensive as a shadow." He has, at first, a passion for Ginevra Fanshawe, until her love of money and a sneer at Mrs. Bretton quenches his love at last. He then falls in love with Polly de Bassompierre. Lucy conquers her love for him and buries all his treasured letters to her, saying, "Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful but you are not mine. Good-night, and God bless you!" John and Polly eventually marry and live a happy life together. The poor story-teller struggled in vain against illness and melancholy. She writes to Mrs. Gaskell of “deep dejection of spirits,” and to Mr. Williams that it is no use grumbling over hindered powers or retarded work, “for no words can make a change.”

However, from 1831 onwards, Emily and Anne 'seceded' from the Glass Town Confederacy to create a 'spin-off' called Gondal, which included many of their poems. [9] [10] After 1831, Charlotte and Branwell concentrated on an evolution of the Glass Town Confederacy called Angria. [5] [11] Christine Alexander, a Brontë juvenilia historian, [12] wrote "both Charlotte and Branwell ensured the consistency of their imaginary world. When Branwell exuberantly kills off important characters in his manuscripts, Charlotte comes to the rescue and, in effect, resurrects them for the next stories [...]; and when Branwell becomes bored with his inventions, such as the Glass Town magazine he edits, Charlotte takes over his initiative and keeps the publication going for several more years". [13] :6–7 The sagas the siblings created were episodic and elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which have been published as juvenilia. They provided them with an obsessive interest during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for literary vocations in adulthood. [5] Roe Head School, in Mirfield Letter from Charlotte to her publisher, 25 June 1849, from Smith, M, ed. (1995). The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: Volume Two, 1848 – 1851. Clarendon Press. cited in Miller 2002, p.19 Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moonlight—forgotten in the park—here once more flowed in upon perception. High she rode, and calm and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fête, the fire and bright hues of those lamps had outdone and outshone her for an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The Literary Protégées of the Lake Poets, Dennis Low (Chapter 1 contains a revisionist contextualisation of Robert Southey's infamous letter to Charlotte Brontë)

Villette also explores isolation and cross-cultural conflict in Lucy's attempts to master the French language, as well as conflicts between her English Protestantism and Catholicism. Her denunciation of Catholicism is unsparing: e.g., "God is not with Rome."

I do not like the love,”—she says—“either the kind or the degree of it,” —and she maintains that “its prevalence in the book, and effect on the action of it,” go some way to explain and even to justify the charge of ‘coarseness’ which had been brought against the writer’s treatment of love in Jane Eyre. Price, Sandra Leigh (17 May 2018). "Emily Bronte and Me". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 6 June 2021.For reasons that are not stated, Lucy leaves Mrs. Bretton's home a few weeks after Polly's departure. Some years pass, during which an unspecified family tragedy leaves Lucy without family, home, or means. After some initial hesitation, she is hired as a caregiver by Miss Marchmont, a rheumatic crippled woman. Lucy is soon accustomed to her work and has begun to feel content with her quiet, frugal lifestyle. Machuca, Daniela (July 2007), "My own still shadow-world": melancholy and feminine intermediacy in Charlotte Brontë's Villette, eCommons@USASK . Ginevra has been seeing the Count De Hamal secretly. He has been visiting her at the school dressed as the spectral nun. On the night Ginevra elopes with the Count, it is revealed to Lucy that the ghostly visitation was nothing other than Count De Hamal in disguise. Lucy is relieved that she has never seen a ghost.

Charlotte Brontë ( / ˈ ʃ ɑːr l ə t ˈ b r ɒ n t i/, commonly /- t eɪ/; [1] 21 April 1816– 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. Mr. Williams will have told you [she writes to Mr. Smith] that I have yielded with ignoble facility in the matter of The Professor. Still it may be proper to make some attempt towards dignifying that act of submission by averring that it was done ‘under protest.’ Perhaps with slips of him you might light an occasional cigar—or you might remember to lose him some day—and a Cornhill functionary would gather him up and consign him to the repositories of waste paper, and thus he would prematurely find his way to the ‘butterman’ and trunkmakers. Lucy and Graham meet Polly (Paulina Home) again at the same theatre after a fire, in which Polly is injured. Polly's father has inherited the title "de Bassompierre" and is now a Count; thus her name is now Paulina Mary Home de Bassompierre. Polly and Graham soon discover that they knew each other in the past and slowly renew their friendship. They fall in love and eventually marry despite the initial reluctance of Polly's father.Rachel’s acting transfixed me with wonder, enchained me with interest, and thrilled me with horror … it is scarcely human nature that she shows you; it is something wilder and worse; the feelings and fury of a fiend.”

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