“The essential meaning of the Romantic emphasis on feeling is not cultivation of one quality or power at the expense of others, but the pursuit of an ideal of unity or compleatness of being.” (10)
‑ David Perkins (ed) English Romantic Writers (1967)
Since finishing my re-read of Villette this winter, I have been doing word studies. One of the most recent has been for every use of the word “Imagination,” of which there are only 12 in the entire text. While several instances have a rather simple usage and implications, one passage in particular stands out as revealing something about the character of Lucy and her life-philosophy in relation to Imagination, involving Reason and Feeling. This passage comes in Chapter XXI – “The Reaction” – when, during a struggle between Reason and Feeling, Lucy appeals to Imagination to arbitrate between them.
[If you have not read the novel and do not want spoilers, please read
no further.]
At this point in her story, Lucy has returned to the pensionnat after spending some months with the Brettons in La Terrasse. When John Bretton drops her off, he promises to write her letters; sensing she might feel alone and isolated being back at the school and not with him and his family. (¶ 3) Lucy questions the offer (¶ 18), assuming Dr John is too busy and important a man to trifle with writing letters to her, her Reason – here making its first appearance in the coming conflict – telling her not to expect more than one such letter (¶ 19). Lucy argues with Reason that, as she is not eloquent or of strong physical presence, that a letter might be the best way to communicate one’s feelings. (¶ 24):
Reason only answered, “At your peril you cherish that idea, or suffer its influence to animate any writing of yours!”
“But if I feel, may I _never_ express?”
“_Never!_” declared Reason. (¶s 25-27)
Lucy tells us that Reason laid a withering hand on her shoulder, in this moment, and that her ear ‘froze’ as Reason gave this command! Thereinafter begins a debate between Reason and Feeling; Feeling telling Lucy she must drink in all that John will write and then write him back expressively of her own reaction and feelings. Then, after she has imagined writing such an attentive, expressive and grateful reply, Reason steps in and sternly assures her that it would be foolish to reply in such terms, insisting that she must destroy any such letter, should she ever write it! Lucy tells us:
I groaned under her bitter sternness. Never—never—oh, hard word! This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. [1] (¶28)
Where does this stance of her Reason come from? It may well stem from what Lucy herself has actually experienced; which has kept her from any broader understanding what life-in-the-world might – or could – really be. The eight-year hiatus – between the early Bretton chapters and the Miss Marchmont chapter; wherein some undisclosed tragedy unfolded – is where her Reason has weighed anchor. She continues to draw her ‘truth’ from that fateful period as a sentient, reasoning person now in her mid-20’s, not – at least yet – having had disconfirming experiences that might serve to re-educate her Reason.
This all-too-often happens to people whose lives have been hard and treacherous, especially if unbearably dehumanizing, from an early age—giving rise to the belief that life can only be a trial to be endured, and nothing – or at least little – more. You cannot but feel for those persons for whom their Reason has been entrained only by the awful things they have experienced. She avers:
Reason might be right; …
I am sad for Lucy when she says this, not because ‘Reason’ is intrinsically some villain, but because hers is so badly grounded. Yes, Reason is in part right; but so is Feeling, in part. Unfortunately, Lucy has not had much experience to assure her that life is other than what her Reason now tells her.
As Reason holds her down, oppressing her with Her logic, Lucy rebels and turns to another source of inspiration; Imagination – whom, she says, understands her and her longings. Lucy, having called Reason a Hag, now speaks of liberating herself from Reason, if only for a short time – calling upon Imagination as a “divine” persona, saying—
… yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her,
to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination—_her_ soft, bright foe, _our_ sweet Help, our divine Hope. We shall and must break bounds at intervals,
despite the terrible revenge that awaits our return. (¶ 28)
I revel with her when she says she is ready to defy the tyrant (as we should rightly defy all tyrants) and rush out from under the oppressive, withering hand! Fortunately for her, Lucy has this other divine power to which she can appeal; Imagination!
This is a deep-rooted theme, in which the Imagination is seen to be able to empower us, enabling us to break-open our acquired bonds; hopefully for the better or at least to better see the truth of ourselves and our situation in life—whether these bonds be sociocultural, psychological or spiritual. While Reason, properly used, can enable us to see that which limits and constrains_ as well as that which nurtures and empowers_ us, Romanticists generally understood that, when it is vaunted up as the supreme power over our other ‘faculties,’ it may become a drying, constraining force in one’s life.
Reason, from a
Romanticist point of view, was considered not only useful but a valuable ‘tool’
facilitating greater insight into life, promoting a non-superstitious
understanding of Earth & Cosmos and our role and place in this physical dimension
of reality.[2] However, left
to its own devices (i.e., logic, critical thinking, the scientific method—all
of which are good when wisely wielded), uncomplemented by other ‘faculties’
such as emotion and intuition, it can become a barrier to the pursuit of
wisdom; both about the Natural world and ourselves as a manifestation of the
Cosmos.
Feeling, on the other hand, at least when untethered from Reason, tends to bend toward sentimentalism (in the sense of over-vaunted emotion; an emotional response not in proportion to the object of that emotion). Romanticists, as well as many adherents to the principles of the Enlightenment, saw the problem with excessive emotional response; of being so subsumed in one’s emotions that one is in danger of being existentially incapacitated; unable to deal with the realities of life and the world.
Lucy’s debate here,
between Reason and Feeling, vividly dramatizes this dilemma; one with which we
still struggle today. Her emotions want
her to express everything she feels for John Graham, anticipating the wondrous
happiness she will have in response to getting his first letter. A perfectly natural response, and one many of
us have probably had; in one form or another, at one time or another and possibly
many times in our lives, if we’ve been fortunate. But then in steps Reason, conditioned by Lucy’s
past experiences, and counterdicts the honest passion she feels in response to the
possibility of receiving a letter from John.
I take it that, given what little we understand of her past, she
possibly never had a friend write her a letter before? _Just a supposition. If so, I can imagine the excitement that first
communique might stir up; indeed, I remember the moment in my own young life! But her Reason is the dominant authority
figure in her world, undermining and attempting to block Lucy’s self-expression
at every turn, nurturing her fear of rejection, which I believe haunts her at a
deep level.
Unfortunately, our Reason can only process the ‘data’ it has been fed via our experiences; which include internal as well as external experiences—and the intuitions we may have had in reflecting upon those experiences. Beyond intuition and experience, education plays a heady role in forming a correctly grounded and life-enhancing Reason. Education can correct both misconceptions and mistakes in our thinking and in our emotional life. This, both Romanticists and the practitioners of the Enlightenment philosophy also understood.
For the Romanticist, Reason
and Feeling each have value, but left to their own devices, they have a
tendency to contradict and frustrate one another. Here, then, is where Imagination may step in;
and for Lucy She is divine; it might not be an exaggeration to call Her a
kind of ‘goddess’ figure? To rush from a
Reason so narrowly construed and its solutions so constructed as to imprison a
soul, one needs Hope; and this is what Imagination provides Lucy. Note what she calls Her: Reason’s “soft,
bright foe, _our_ sweet Help, our divine Hope.”
It is a ‘divine’ Hope (with a capital ‘H’). The imperative to “break bounds,” she knows,
is necessary for her survival, despite the cost that is coming. That cost will be counted the very next
morning; she knows – from former experiences – that it will be so. Nevertheless, she continues to castigate Reason,
averring that—
Reason is vindictive as a devil: for me she was always envenomed as a step-mother. If I have obeyed her it has chiefly been with the obedience of fear, not of love. Long ago I should have died of her ill-usage, her stint, her chill, her barren board, her icy bed, her savage, ceaseless blows; but for that kinder Power who holds my secret and sworn allegiance. Often has Reason turned me out by night, in mid-winter, on cold snow, flinging for sustenance the gnawed bone dogs had forsaken: sternly has she vowed her stores held nothing more for me—harshly denied my right to ask better things…. (¶28)
Her Reason
acts as the evil-stepmother from fairy tales; one of several fairy themes in the
novel—and Lucy has been abused by Her.
Fear has cowed Lucy into obeisance to this slave-driver, Reason. She is an unwilling prisoner, enduring Her
“savage, ceaseless blows.” Love plays no
free role in her oppressed state. Reason
would have slain her, ultimately, she avers, had she not had a saviour, “that
kinder Power” with whom she holds a “secret and sworn allegiance.” Secret from whom? Reason, for sure. Feeling as well, I would argue. And perhaps there are other forces in the
world that demand that our Hope be kept secret, as in ours, today, though Hope always
asks to be acted upon as best we can.
To illustrate and amplify her experience of this oppressor, Reason, Lucy here uses a metaphor[3] of being an outcast in the darkest time of the year; mid-winter—thrown into the cold snow, having a gnawed bone tossed to her by the Hag as her only sustenance; that is—a bone the ‘dogs’ have rejected after eating off it all they could get—leaving no meat for Lucy! Lucy is being starved by her Reason. Despite this, she is often in obeisance to Reason throughout the story she is telling us.
She has learned – as her Reason declares – that expressing your feelings will call down some peril upon you, resulting in suffering. Does this, we have to wonder, shed any light on whatever happened to her in that unnarrated term of years? Nothing, I can discern, but a slight peek through the crack in the wall of her walled-in being-in-becoming, cast in yet another complex metaphor (like the one in Chapter IV of the shipwreck). Fortunately, Lucy does have Hope.
She then describes an encounter with Imagination that supports the idea of Her being “divine.” This encounter is an epiphany – like the one in Chapter V wherein Aurora Borealis spoke to her – here the mortal Lucy seeing a heavenly manifestation of her Hope:
Then, looking up, have I seen in the sky a head amidst circling stars, of which the midmost and the brightest lent a ray sympathetic and attent. A spirit, softer and better than Human Reason, has descended with quiet flight to the waste—bringing all round her a sphere of air borrowed of eternal summer; bringing perfume of flowers which cannot fade—fragrance of trees whose fruit is life; bringing breezes pure from a world whose day needs no sun to lighten it. (¶ 28)
Note
that she says, “have I seen’ instead of the affirmation “I have seen.” As the sentence is not marked as a question,
this suggests to me the humility of the poet and mystic; never boldly stating
in literal terms the scenes of visions; the stuff of epiphanic
experiences. Always suggesting what you
have seen, without lording it over others.
This “head midst circling stars” that she ‘sees’ in the sky is mythic imagery. The goddess Diana and the Virgin Mary are just two examples of beings who have been associated with stellar phenomena. The circling stars, while certainly referencing the circumpolar movement of the stars around the North Star, also serve to reference the starry crown worn by such mythic beings associated with the heavens. Lucy receives a “sympathetic” and attentive light from the brightest star. This bright star thus comes to her in a caring way; to offer succor. I might suggest that the one bright star is a Muse-like descriptor; coming down to help the mortal under Her care. Imagination is, for Lucy, “softer and better” than Reason. She descends into “the waste,” which can be understood as the wasteland of Lucy’s life and soul as well as the wasteland of modern society.
The divinity of Imagination is referenced in both fairy and biblical
terms. The references to “eternal
summer” and the “perfume of flowers” that can never fade have resonances with the
lore of the fairy world. Some fairy
stories suggest that the Otherworld is one without a harsh wintry season. The fragrance of flowers in the fairy realm
is said to be more delightful even than it is in our actual world, and it does
not fade. When you have been visited by
fairies, a perfume is sometimes detected and may remain pleasantly – and
perhaps enchantingly – present for many hours to days; longer than the
fragrance of natural flowers. The
“fragrance of trees whose fruit is life” can certainly be understood as a
biblical allusion, but also has fairy-resonance, in either case evoking both
the time of human Innocence and the possibility of eternal life. A fairy Tree of Life is fragrant with
blossoms; the fruit of which sustains and perpetuates the life of the one
gifted with finding it—providing sustenance for traveling in the
Otherworld. The last descriptor – “a
world whose day needs no sun to lighten it” – at one level alludes to the
Christian Heaven, but is also suggestive of the fairy realm; where the Moon is ‘the
Sun at Night’ and ‘the Lamp of the Fairyfolk;’ that world not being experienced
as lighted by the Sun. The fairyfolk are
generally associated with the nighttime; they are nocturnals. Lucy often has powerful experiences at night,
being ‘visited’ in the dark hours, and so may may be one of those mortals who
have a fairy connection. Lucy then
proclaims that:
My hunger has this good angel appeased with food, sweet and strange, gathered amongst gleaning angels, garnering their dew-white harvest in the first fresh hour of a heavenly day; tenderly has she assuaged the insufferable fears which weep away life itself—kindly given rest to deadly weariness—generously lent hope and impulse to paralyzed despair. Divine, compassionate, succourable influence! (¶ 28)
Whereas Reason starves her, Imagination provides true sustenance. What Lucy gains from her turn to Imagination is like the food of the gods; “sweet,” “strange” and connected with “angels.” She is amongst “gleaning angels,” which may simply refer to other heavenly beings; other ‘goddesses’ perhaps—metaphored here as “angels” in the sense of ‘helpful beings.’ Are they ‘gleaning’ food for other mortals that they are assisting, or for Lucy herself? The food is a “harvest” that is “dew white;” being another term associated with the fairy realm, in the lore of which “dewy” is oft used to describe our experience of their world or the places in this world where fairies may be encountered. “When the dew falls, the fairies arise.”[4] The food comes as if at dawn in ‘heaven’ or, again in the fairy realm, where every ‘day’ is heavenly and fresh as the dawn dew.[5] Imagination is to Lucy “this good angel,” provisioning her with Hope.
Seen from another metaphorical angle, the food is “sweet and strange” like the manna that the Israelites ate in the desert when on their 40-year wandering journey to the Promised Land. The descriptor “dew-white harvest” could refer to that miraculous manna as well, but in being linked symbolically to ‘heaven’ is yet another side-ways referencing of the fairy realm; which has long been seen as an ‘alternate heaven’ to the Christian one; dew on the leaves and grass also signifying the presence of fairies in our world—bringing ‘heaven’ to us, at least for a single night.
This divine Imagination – described in such terms -- has helped Lucy slip the noose of the fears her poorly grounded Reason has instilled in her; fears leading to the kind of weeping that destroys a soul and may even bring one to the precipice of death; whether of the soul or of the flesh. Lucy has taken true rest in the ministering of this “good angel,” the ministrations of which are restoring her from “deadly weariness.” Imagination has been generous with the Hope with which She has instilled Lucy, energizing her against the kind of despair that robs a person of the ability to fully live this ever-so-brief mortal life.
She then finishes with a paean, calling Her “Divine, compassionate,” and a “succourable influence!” “Succor” being a relief from distress as well as assistance in a time of trouble. As such, Imagination is, for Lucy, something that aids and sustains her in her distress, liberating her briefly from the bondage of Reason. At the height of this ode to Imagination, she then declares:
When I bend the knee to other than God, it shall be at thy white and winged feet, beautiful on mountain or on plain. Temples have been reared to the Sun—altars dedicated to the Moon. Oh, greater glory! (¶28)
Lucy here makes a pledge of loyalty to Imagination; she ‘bends the knee’ to Her. “White and winged feet” is also mythic language. It is notable that the Sun and Moon are here put on a par with each other, compared without making one or the other ‘dominant’ or more important. As such, the Sun could well represent Reason, while the Moon might represent Feeling? These heavenly bodies played a symbolic role in both Jane Eyre and Shirley, but here – at least in this chapter – their role is somewhat subordinated to Imagination. [I will have to go back to those two earlier novels, now, and see if the same relationship holds there.] The “greater glory” she extols refers to Imagination! Lucy concludes with this avowal:
Sovereign complete! thou hadst, for endurance, thy great army of martyrs; for achievement, thy chosen band of worthies. Deity unquestioned, thine essence foils decay! (¶29)
Notice here that “Heaven” is capitalized, perhaps intimating the Christian Heaven and not the alternate fairy ‘heaven.’ This implies that for Lucy – as for Charlotte Brontë – Imagination’s divinity is connected to God’s Realm and grace. This speaks to an interesting ambivalence in Lucy; as, I believe, in Charlotte – Reason, Feeling and Imagination being runed in fairy terms from folklore and myth while also being woven into Christian mythos and cosmology. There is a willingness in Charlotte’s novels to blend Pagan and Christian elements into an imagery and a narrative that is open to more than just one system of belief—an element of her storytelling world that I love and fully embrace.
I would have liked to be able to ask Lucy to expound on the remark about Imagination having many martyrs! Does she mean the Poets and other creative people who in Her service perished from the hard work of creating? Or perhaps_ those who have been persecuted and victimized – on account of their art and the Imagination-illumined lives that they led – by a society that did not – and still often does not – understand them? I tend to connect the “army of martyrs” and the “chosen band of worthies” as complementary; a poetic parallelism—that is – they refer to the same group of people, who both endured and achieved much?
Lucy then avows that Imagination’s divinity is unquestioned, and that the ‘essence’ of Imagination keeps the imaginative person from “decay,” this intimating the creeping failure of spirit that often undermines our imaginative, creative life.
At the end of this paean, Imagination speaks to Lucy, comforting her after her weeping. Lucy tells us:
This daughter of Heaven remembered me to-night; she saw me weep, and she came with comfort: “Sleep,” she said. “Sleep, sweetly—I gild thy dreams!” (¶30)
Lucy tells us that Imagination did as She said (¶31). However, the monster Reason does return, just as she feared, once Lucy is awake in the morning, re-igniting the struggle within her between Reason and Feeling.
Lucy’s first anticipations of actually receiving a letter from John touched upon and lit-up a passion in Lucy’s heart and, turning to Imagination, she allowed herself to think of what she hoped for; deep down, with John—though his heart is turned toward others (first Ginevra and later Paulina); and by this point in the story, does Lucy know it? What does she ultimately do? Does she follow Imagination’s lead?
The first actual letter from John does not come until a fortnight later (Chapter XXI ¶s 97-98). Lucy has a deep and warming, heart-felt reaction to it – as anyone, especially a young person, inexperienced in such matters, might – and when she finally has it in her hands, she takes it – as a treasure – immediately to the dormitory where she sleeps. There she secures it away “in silver paper,” committing “it to the case,” putting it in a “box” and then putting the box in a “drawer” after which she “reclosed, relocked the dormitory, and returned to class,” exclaiming to the reader, “feeling as if fairy tales were true, and fairy gifts no dream.” (¶ 105). It is in the next chapter that she goes up to the attic (called the ”garret” in the text) to read the letter in private, there encountering the ghostly Nun for the first time! (Chapter XXII – The Letter – ¶s 12-20)
In the next chapter (XXIII “Vashti”) we are given a much more familiar and ‘snowy’ version of Lucy as she describes for the reader how she eventually dealt with her letters from Dr John. She begins the account by telling us:
It was three weeks since the adventure of the garret,[6] and I possessed in that case, box, drawer up-stairs, casketed[7] with that first letter, four companions like to it, traced by the same firm pen, sealed with the same clear seal, full of the same vital comfort. (¶ 3)
The letters from John have continued to come, and she is treasuring them by keeping them secreted away in what strikes me as a ‘Chinese box’ way of securing them: the case goes in the box which gets put in a drawer. Lucy then speaks of them, from her future point-of-view, saying:
Vital comfort it seemed to me then: I read them in after years; they were kind letters enough—pleasing letters, because composed by one well pleased; in the two last there were three or four closing lines half-gay, half-tender, “by _feeling_ touched, but not subdued.” Time, dear reader, mellowed them to a beverage of this mild quality; but when I first tasted their elixir, fresh from the fount so honoured, it seemed juice of a divine vintage: a draught which Hebe might fill, and the very gods approve. (¶ 3)
Hebe was a Greek goddess of youth in whose cups the gods and goddesses were served nectar and ambrosia.[8] When Lucy first read these letters, she says, they were like the offering in Hebe’s cup. They affected her as an elixir; a magical or medical potion—a brew intended to heal or aid the recipient in some way; whether mystical or practical. For Lucy, therefore, John’s letters had at first affected her as a magical concoction of divine origin. What might they have effected, in Lucy’s soul; in her character—had things gone otherwise with John than they did? Later in her life, they had diminished in effect and were simply pleasing, pleasant and tender. I have been unable to find the source of the reference “by feeling touched, but not subdued,” [If you know where it is from, please let me know.], this phrase expressing the Romanticist understanding that Feeling is a good and a boon to human nature, so long as one is not overwhelmed by_ or subsumed in_ it.
Interlude—
If I may step aside from the main analysis for a moment—
This passage, while acknowledging Lucy’s pleasure in keeping the letters, also shows that something which happened in a later chapter must have been undone at some point. In “The Burial" (Ch XXVI) Lucy inters John’s letters – in a jar that she specifically purchases for the purpose – under the Methuselah tree in the garden. The immediate impulse was Madame Beck having purloined them – twice! – Lucy fearing that M Paul had actually perused them in Madame Beck’s presence. (¶ 20). Yet she also surely buried them because she had finally accepted that John was not interested in her, romantically, and probably never would be, as in the previous chapter John’s attentions to Paulina had begun to show Lucy that his romantic interest had shifted from Ginevra to Miss Bassompierre.
John, she finally accepts, had treated her as a friend and confidant only, but never in a romantic way. Lucy had wept over her realization that no more letters were to be coming to her from that “goodly river” (¶ 15), and so buries his letters under the tree beneath which the Nun was supposed to have been buried-alive in a century long past; yet here she says that in “after years” she had re-read the letters and found their effect “mellowed.”
I wonder when she dug them up; perhaps before she took up her position as teacher at the new school M. Paul purchased and set up for her? _Only a guess. Thinking about this burial, does the place and manner of interment indicate that she has buried her letters from John “alive” in some sense? _What do you think, ‘dear Reader?’
And now, back to the main analysis—
After Lucy describes the effect of the letters on her, she finally tells us how she dealt with responding to these valued epistles—
Does the reader, remembering what was said some pages back, care to ask how I answered these letters: whether under the dry, stinting check of Reason, or according to the full, liberal impulse of Feeling? (Chapter XXIII; ¶ 4)
Yes, the reader would be interested to know, Lucy. How did Imagination aid you in making your replies? To this she admits:
To speak truth, I compromised matters; I served two masters: I bowed down in the houses of Rimmon, and lifted the heart at another shrine. I wrote to these letters two answers—one for my own relief, the other for Graham’s perusal. (¶5)
Alas, she did not follow Imagination’s lead but made a compromise between Reason and Feeling; a plausible resolution—and one many people have no doubt made in their lives. However, to understand the full heft of this confession, we need to explore to what “the houses of Rimmon” refers. It is a metaphor based on a story in the Bible (II Kings 5:15) in which a military commander serving the King of Aram, became devoted to Yahweh after the prophet Elisa healed him of leprosy. Naaman later begged forgiveness of the prophet, as he was tempted – and was willing – to stand by his king in the worship of the god Rimmon. In the scriptural story, worldly conformity undermined devotion to Yahweh.
The phrase “house of Rimmon” has been used metaphorically to mean being fork-tongued; saying one thing and doing or believing another; perhaps paying lip-service to an idea or principle one has not sincerely embraced or, more seriously, sacrificing one’s integrity for the sake of mere conformity and voluntary obeisance to the conventional. This is important to the text as it suggests Lucy is like the commander, bowing in subservience to Reason and Feeling, when she has just recently devoted herself to her great benefactor, Imagination! Like Naaman, she has been healed by the One to whom she has vowed herself; Imagination had relieved her of her fears and “gilded” Lucy’s dreams that night. Thankful of this, Lucy declared Imagination to be her “Sovereign.” This biblical story, however, clearly illumines how Lucy handled the letters:
To begin with: Feeling and I turned Reason out of doors, drew against her bar and bolt, then we sat down, spread our paper, dipped in the ink an eager pen, and, with deep enjoyment, poured out our sincere heart. When we had done—when two sheets were covered with the language of a strongly-adherent affection, a rooted and active gratitude— … (¶ 6)
The battle is still going on in her, between Feeling and Reason, apparently in the absence of Imagination, who is left out of the conversation not long after the allegiance had been pledged; just as Naaman had broken his vow to God very soon after making it. Lucy, under Feeling’s direction and influence, has penned a letter full of affectionate words, promulgated from a Heart that is “sincere” and expressive of “gratitude;” for the letters received as well as for John’s attention to her since she left the comforting world of the Brettons at La Terrasse. Then, before she continues, putting off telling us once again what she in fact did with John's letters, we have this insert—
(once, for all, in this parenthesis, I disclaim, with the utmost scorn, every sneaking suspicion of what are called “warmer feelings:” women do not entertain these “warmer feelings” where, from the commencement, through the whole progress of an acquaintance, they have never once been cheated of the conviction that, to do so would be to commit a mortal absurdity: nobody ever launches into Love unless he has seen or dreamed the rising of Hope’s star over Love’s troubled waters) (¶ 6)
But Lucy, we know you had warmer feelings, didn’t you? _as you expressed them to us when you received the very first letter!
I include this parenthesis in the analysis, here, as it reveals Lucy’s feelings regarding John, and may help explain the eventual burying of his letters. This is a cold self-reprimand and a repudiation of her own warm feelings for John; however repressed – perhaps from the future Lucy who is writing this narrative many years later? – and for what she may have been hoping in her relationship with John at the time. Lucy here expresses a cultural ‘rule’ – so entrenched in her worldly milieu still at that time – that a woman was not be the one to express herself freely in matters of love but must await the man’s confession or profession of love. This bias is something Romanticists worked to controvert and overthrow in their narratives! Yet here, whether she really believes it or not, Lucy declaims that women do not entertain these “warmer feelings” until given some assurance that the man feels something for her that might permit her to return the affection. Unless she is given some confidence of the man’s feelings and intentions, Lucy is suggesting, it would be dangerous – to her reputation? _to her relationship with the man? – for the woman to express herself. Yet she did feel them, didn’t she?
Here is the cold, snowy Lucy again, repressing her feelings that did not come to fruition. She struggles with her willingness and desire to express to John her true feelings, in part because of her culture’s convention regarding this; as expressed in this parenthesis, but also out of her own self-denying tendency—to think of herself as unworthy of other people’s attention, much less their love. To enter into Love, she avers, it is necessary for "Hope's Star” to at least be “dreamed” if not “seen” to be rising, shining above “Love’s troubled waters.” This, in her relationship with John, she did not have or, if she thought she did, she was slowly and finally freed of the illusion. It would be finally dashed later in the story by John’s avowal that he would have been her ‘great friend’ had she been a boy when they knew each other back in Bretton. (Chapter XXVII, ¶49-51) [9]
After this parenthesis, then, Lucy finally finishes her account of how she handled the letters:
Lucy is here like Naaman kneeling at the altar of Rimmon; she has broken her vow to Imagination and fallen back under a self-sacrificing surrender to Reason and Feeling; who are at odds, as usual. And I must ask, “Lucy, wouldn’t “closely-clinging” perhaps suggest those “warmer feelings” you were just decrying?”
Here we see the full struggle depicted as between opposing divine contenders; the third – Imagination – apparently being wholly left out (like Yahweh and Naaman’s allegiance to him at the resolution of the scene from II Kings). This could be seen as a dialectic from one angle; Feeling and Reason as thesis and antithesis, Imagination then being the fruition and resolution of their struggle? No mention here, though, of Imagination in all of Her qualities; beauty and aid in times of trouble, et cetera. This is cold Lucy Snowe back under the yoke of her Reason.
I was disappointed to read this after the earlier epiphanic description of the rule of Imagination over both Reason and Feeling; seen almost as a kind of Romanticist Charioteer who guides the other two ‘faculties,’ bringing them into bridled cooperation – just two chapters earlier.[10]
Lucy’s letters, dictated under the auspices of Feeling had been full of a sense of attachment with John; a deep, sincere attachment that was admitting of the troubles and trials of life (“all that was painful in the destiny of its object”), offering to absorb these “storms and lightnings” in John’s existence, which she says she views with “a passion of solicitude.” Note that she believes herself willing to take to herself things that she normally fears – storms and lightnings! Here is also one of those moments in the story when Lucy avows a passion; would this constitute “warmer feelings” again? – over against her oft repeated assertion that she is a person who likes to remain quiet, calm and alone. The word “solicitude” implies genuine care and concern for another’s well-being. As such, she expresses here a willingness to be passionately engaged with John in his life-journey, for his welfare. These letters – though never shared with us – have allowed Lucy to reveal to us just how much she cared for John; though she only – and then, ever obliquely – expressed it at earlier points in the story.
Then, like a monster, Reason broke down her Heart’s door, devouring Lucy’s allegiance with Feeling. “She did right,” Lucy tries to assure us. Thus says the willingly defecting Naaman, bowing at a false altar with her worldly dictator, in an act of disloyalty to her true “good angel;” her Sovereign, Imagination! Here, the description of Reason as a tyrant, a Hag and Oppressor is now conspicuously missing. Lucy seems to have accepted the tenets of her Overlord, and ‘knows’ – or at least ‘believes’ – that her shorter, less affectionate, passionless replies to Dr John’s letters are more appropriate; as they might cause less ‘trouble?’ While this could well be true, her past experience is dictating this re-submission to the tyrant; her Reason—which is not healthily grounded.
“She did right.”
We here see Lucy retreating once again from passion; from a full expression of her being-in-becoming, as she does repeatedly throughout the novel. She is accepting the prison into which Reason – grounded in her traumatic life-experience in that eight-year hiatus in the narrative – has caged her. She seems to have been unable to imagine-her-way-out of it.
“She did right.” Thus says the willingly submissive soul.
If, however, she had continued to kneel at the altar of Imagination, Lucy may have come to a more balanced – and possibly more honest – address to John in response to his letters. And what might John have felt or done in answer to her replies? I wonder, did he see Lucy only as a friend because she had never expressed her true feelings? Those “warner feelings” she had but denies.? His potential response is what she has lost-out-on in re-submitting to the warring faculties within her and abandoning her Sovereign.
Finis
I welcome comments and questions, so please feel free to respond.
Thanks for reading!
[1] The text I am quoting from is The Project Gutenberg eBook of Villette. The underscores (“_”) surrounding various words I take to indicate italicized words. I am using paragraph numbers, as there are no page numbers in the downloaded text.
[2] I think of Coleridge as I write this, who was into the physical sciences and philosophy, using reason to figure out the nature of reality, while using the imagination to create his poetical works.
[3] Charlotte Brontë’s use of metaphor in this novel is often startling and incisive! This one is as nuanced as that of the “ship’’ in Chapter IV, used to try and describe what happened to her in that eight-year hiatus.
[4] This quote comes from an old poem; probably in a book of 19th century fairy poetry I read years ago, but I have lost the citation.
[5] Fairy lore is conflicted about whether there is ‘daylight’ in the fairy realm, or if the light of their ‘day’ is some preternatural light, or even the light of the Moon, always in the sky overhead. Different stories and traditions have different views on this. However one wishes to untangle this, there is a ‘day’ in the fairy world as well as ‘night.’ This lack of consensus in the lore the of Mystery of the Fairy Otherworld and our relationship to it; the strangeness any mortal might feel in visiting it.
[6] “The adventures in the garret” refers to the first visitation of the Nun in the garret where she went to read the first epistle from John.
[7] The word “Casket” does not mean a coffin, as we tend to use the word today, but a small, secure box used for some valued thing.
[8] Hebe was a daughter of Zeus and Hera and later became the divine wife of Heracles. She had influence over eternal youth and the ability to restore youth to mortals, a power that appears exclusive to her in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
[9] Chapter XXVII – The Hotel Crecy – John says: “I believe if you had been a boy, Lucy, instead of a girl—my mother’s god-son instead of her god-daughter, we should have been good friends: our opinions would have melted into each other.” (¶49) To which Lucy responded—
“Trying, then, to keep down the unreasonable pain which thrilled my heart, on thus being made to feel that while Graham could devote to others the most grave and earnest, the manliest interest, he had no more than light raillery for Lucy, the friend of lang syne, I inquired calmly,—“On what points are we so closely in accordance?” (¶ 49)
[10] I think of the Tarot here, “The Chariot” (Major Arcana VII), as an image of this relationship, rightly envisioned. This card has to do with overcoming obstacles, self-discipline and hard work. The two sphinxes – as I know them at least from the Rider-Waite deck – could be interpreted as Reason and Feeling, with the Charioteer standing in for Imagination.
