“At the deepest, most archaic level of Brontë’s fiction resides the vision of an idealized Romantic love. It controls her earliest work as it informs her last. Although its manifestation steadily alters, it never loses its importance, even in the most placid characters, it sends out tremors from below.” (66)
- Karen Chase Eros and Psyche: The Representation of Personality in Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and George Elliot (Routledge, 1984)
It has been just over a year since I finished reading Villette for the first time, and I am still engaged with the text and with Lucy Snowe; coming to appreciate her state-of-soul as well as her life-situation at the end-point of her narrative. Hence this third blog.[1] My journey has brought me from a deep concern for her at the end of my first read; having felt that she was likely still in a state of unresolved trauma with regard to those unnarrated 8 years of her life between the early chapters in Bretton and her engagement as companion to Miss Marchmont—toward a more positive consideration of her state at the end of her story.
This change was first prompted by my reading Barry Quales’ The Secular Pilgrimage of Victorian Fiction: The Novel as Book of Life (Cambridge University Press, 1982), in which the author suggested that there is evidence in the text that Lucy may have achieved a degree of self-realization, and might even have been ‘happy’ by the end of her tale. I had to ask: Had she navigated through life and come to a place where she is herself; alone, yes, but not un-self-realized? Quales said:
“That Brontë’s heroines … achieve a certain happiness attests to her romance impulse: that her final heroine, Lucy Snowe, can achieve that happiness – “Freedom and Renovation” – only in exile and alone attests to Brontë’s continually darkening sense of the alienating nature of English life.” (50)
Quales encouraged me to consider that her being alone at the end of her narrative – having rejected John Graham Bretton and lost M Paul Emmanuel – was not necessarily a negative state. I certainly don’t think that myself; as I value solitude as much as community, relationship with others as much as independence. What his analysis prompted me to consider, however, was that Lucy underwent a transformation through the course of her story, both in the living of it and in the telling of it – and that her state-of-soul by the end is not as sad and unfortunate as I first understood it to be?
This was reinforced and given heft through my more recent read of Karen Chase’s engaging exploration of the role of eros and psyche in the novel. She has pointed me to specific texts providing evidence of another way of looking at Lucy Snowe at the time when she was writing her story. For Chase, Lucy is a person struggling between independence and romance; a dialectical tension similar to Quales’ theme of “Freedom and Renovation.” Chase first made me take notice of Lucy’s avowal of “success;” so plain-stated that I shouldn’t have neglected to take it into account on my first read. She says—
“The secret of my success did not lie so much in myself, in any endowment, any power of mine, as in a new state of circumstances, a wonderfully changed life, a relieved heart. The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle.” (Ch XLII ¶ 5)
She asserts her success while attributing it to forces beyond her own will; something that is not as often acknowledged as it perhaps should be—the interplay of our own will and desires with those of others. New circumstances can ofttimes open a person to new life-possibilities. For Lucy, it is the friendship that developed between her and M Paul Emmanuel and then his gifting her the little house in which she was able to start a school of her own; something that she had been dreaming of doing as her life at the pensionnat unfolded—this gift being an impetus for change and growth.
Chase then pointed me to Lucy’s next avowal; another one that I had perhaps not given as much attention to as it deserved! Lucy says:
“Do not think that this genial flame sustained itself, or lived wholly on a bequeathed hope or a parting promise. A generous provider supplied bounteous fuel.” (Ch XLII, ¶ 6)
Lucy’s assertion of herself as having or being a “genial flame” is once again humbly attributed to an external catalyst; just as was her success. It was not self-sustaining. She did not live for years after M Paul’s departure by hope alone, nor did she sustain herself solely on his “parting promise” of return. The fuel that sustains her is none other than M Paul Emmanuel’s friendship and generosity.
I have been grappling, as a reader, with accepting this evidence as a true description of Lucy’s state-of-soul at the time she is finishing her narrative. I have come to a confluence of flow in this regard; it may be part of our understanding of Lucy Snowe, at least, but I would urge that it is not the whole picture. To rune this out, I began to think about Lucy’s relationships with John Graham Bretton and M Paul Emmauel. These are the two men in her life in Villette, and the way they respond to her, treat and understand her gives heft to the claim that Lucy sees M Paul as the sustaining force behind her “genial flame” and “success.”
There are several scenes and themes in the narrative through which John and M Paul are being implicitly compared; as persons in themselves as well as in their relation to Lucy. I want to focus on just one of these themes here; how they each react to Lucy’s confession of having seen the Nun. There is a clear difference in their reaction, as well as in their approach to the confession and to Lucy herself as the one claiming to have had this unusual, out-of-the-ordinary experience.
Lucy’s first encounter with the Nun occurs in the garret of the school in Chapter XXII, “The Letter” – after which John queries Lucy as to what she has seen, teasing her that if she did not tell him, he would never write her another letter. (¶ 43). (Note that Lucy was up there reading John’s first letter for the first time!) Despite this meanness, Lucy submits, as she wants – needs – to share with someone what happened up in the garret. She tells him what she saw. And what is his reaction? To write it off, saying that what she really needs is to seek to be happy. He says: “Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both.” (¶ 65) “This is all a matter of the nerves,” he had said even before she described the apparition of the Nun (¶52).
Once he heard her story he pronounced, “I think it a case of spectral illusion: I fear, following on and resulting from long-continued mental conflict." (¶ 63). Dr John here reduces Lucy to the level of one of his patients.
After his ‘diagnosis,’ Lucy is left alone in her musings as to what happened in the attic. He has planted doubts in her mind as to what she experienced, leading her to question her own mental health. Compare this with her discussion with M Paul in the Forbidden Alley in the Garden in Chapter XXXI, “The Dryad,” in which the Nun – its nature and intent – is brought up in a conversation in which M Paul’s care and concern for Lucy has been confessed and made manifest in an act of kindness!
Just before this scene, Lucy had been asleep at a desk in one of the classrooms, and upon waking found herself shawled and her head resting on another shawl (¶ 6). She wonders who could have done this; who had had enough care for her to keep her comfortable and free from getting chilled as she slept? Madame Beck seemed the best candidate, but later, when strolling out into the Garden in the moonlight, she discovers the actual perpetrator of the caring act!
She gravitates, as usual, to the Forbidden Alley – her favorite haunt of solitude – which she has not visited since she buried John’s letters in what I call a ‘jar of confinement.’[2] There Lucy reflects on that ‘epistolary’ burial, which is right below her feet at the foot of the Methuselah Tree, interred just above what is said to be the resting place of the ‘nun buried alive’ in “centuries past” for some misconduct against the rules of her order.
It is interesting that Lucy is here reflecting on her friendship with John, allowing herself to doubt, for a few moments, whether she should have so severed her heart from her hopes regarding John as to have buried his letters, saying:
“I recalled Dr. John; my warm affection for him; my faith in his excellence; my delight in his grace. What was become of that curious one-sided friendship which was half marble and half life; only on one hand truth, and on the other perhaps a jest?” (¶14)
_but, sobering, realizes that her hopes would never have come to pass. She sees that it was “one-sided” as well as stone-like and possibly a joke! She then says, finally, a closing ‘reply’ to John, spoken to him though he is not present, “Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine. Good-night, and God bless you!” (¶ 17)
This “good night” is echoed by another voice and, turning, Lucy finds M Paul standing quite near her in the fading evening light. As they begin to talk, he admits that he was the one who shawled her in the classroom against the chillness of the evening, after which a very honest conversation unfolds, approaching a threshold of depth that will continue to be explored as their story unfolds through the rest of the novel. They discuss his modesty and how he is not impervious to embarrassment; which impresses Lucy, who then feels towards him “a sincerity of esteem which made my heart ache.” (¶ 45).
M Paul then tells her how he keeps his eye on the Garden from a window high up in the boys’ colleges, and how he has long been aware of Lucy’s attraction to the Forbidden Alley; that he has “noticed her taste for seclusion, watched her well, long before” they had come to be on “speaking terms.” (¶ 47). While Lucy criticizes M Paul for his surveillance, she recognizes the concern for herself and the well-being of the students at the school that it represents. She suggests that were it anyone else surveilling the Garden from a high window, she might have more qualms; indicating that she already at this point recognizes M Paul’s good intentions in what he does—even if the acting-out of those intentions raises concerns.
M Paul then lets her know that Madame Beck often comes into the Garden while Lucy is secluded in the Forbidden Alley, and espies her, watching what is going on. The surveillance of M Paul from his window is contrasted with the spying eyes of Madame Beck, for he lets Lucy know this as a warning for her to be on her guard. While Madame Beck’s surveillance of the students and staff in general can, on the one hand, be considered done for the welfare of those spied upon, like M Paul, with regard to Lucy, however, Madame Beck’s surveillance has more complicated motives! This information, shared with Lucy, is one more indication of his care and concern for her. While M Paul sees himself as a benevolent surveillant, he implies that Madame Beck may have less ‘honorable’ motives.
Going deeper into the connection emerging between them, M Paul queries her: “do you recollect my once coming silently and offering you a little knot of white violets when we were strangers?” To which she replies: “I recollect it. I dried the violets, kept them, and have them still.” (¶ 48). This happened before they had begun to be(come) friends, and for that reason her preservation of the proffered violets carries a load of significance! These violets from M Paul were in Lucy’s drawer where she kept her valuables; they were there when she stowed John’s letters away in that same drawer for safe keeping. Imagine_ the scent of the violets from M Paul adding their fragrance to John’s letters? This reminder of the violets certainly speaks to an initial opening toward their eventual relationship sometime early in Lucy’s residence at the pensionnat!
The discussion then moves toward a revelation between them of something they have both seen in the Garden. At first M Paul is fishing; he wants to discover if what he suspects about Lucy may be true. When Lucy queries what he means, sensing that she might know but being unwilling to divulge having seen the Nun – still troubled by John’s dismissive reaction to her experience – he confesses “I have seen, Miss Lucy, things to me unaccountable, that have made me watch all night for a solution, and I have not yet found it.” (¶67). In preparation for further revelation, he queries her whether or not Protestants believe in the supernatural, and whether she is superstitious. After some back and forth between them in relation to these religious questions, M Paul confesses:
“Something comes and goes here: there is a shape frequenting this house by night, different to any forms that show themselves by day. I have indisputably seen a something, more than once; and to me its conventual weeds were a strange sight, saying more than they can do to any other living being. A nun!” (¶ 83)
To which Lucy replies – I always sense
when I read it – with a liberated feeling of relief:
“Monsieur, I, too, have seen it.” (¶ 84)
This is a significant moment in the story, as in it, Lucy begins to recognize in M Paul a kindred spirit. While his attitudes towards her are often patronizing and even overbearing, he struggles, through the course of the novel, to achieve a better understanding of Lucy, until his eventual profession that “I know you, Lucy Snowe,” rings truer.
M Paul is open to extra-ordinary experience, and in his sharing with Lucy that he has also seen the Nun – whatever and whomever it may be – he does not reduce her to a subordinate position in regard to himself. They seem to me more like equals in this exchange; the acceptance of one another’s equality being a necessary basis of true friendship – each acknowledging an experience the other has had, and neither rationalizing the other person’s experience away. Whereas John ‘stood above’ Lucy in his evaluation of her experience of the Nun, M Paul is confessing to Lucy that he has seen a ‘something’ and is hoping Lucy might accept his acknowledgment of it. She does.
M Paul’s confession frees Lucy from the doubts she has had as to the reality of what she has actually seen; the Nun! – regardless of what or who the Nun may be. This shared avowal of having seen a ‘something’ in the Garden is then confirmed at the experiential level by another ‘apparition’ of the Nun, right after their mutual confession! They both see her!
His confession and then the strange experience that they share reveals to Lucy that in M Paul she has found someone who, while oft too-assuredly asserting that he does in fact ‘know her,’ she has something in common with; their state-of-soul and their bearing toward the world are in some sense in alignment, though they are different persons from differing backgrounds. These differences – even the religious ones – they eventually come to accept and affirm in their equality as true friends.
There are other moments in the narrative when M Paul is shown to be a better friend to Lucy than John Graham Bretton ever was or could be. While her feelings for John are never completely assuaged (she admits at one point that she dug-up the letters and re-read them later in her life) by this point in the novel she clearly realizes that he is not ‘for her,’ nor her ‘for him.’ Their relationship would have perhaps remained ‘superficial’ or at least ‘formal,’ whereas Lucy desires depth; depth of feeling and passionate, significant experiences. I was as stunned as she was, I think, when John confessed to her that, had she been a boy back in Bretton, instea of a girl, they should have been ‘great friends!’[3] _i.e., ‘just friends.’
By counterpoint, her feelings for M Paul Emmanuel are deepening as they journey through the novel together until their love becomes manifest and true friendship is avowed. He mentors her, but allows her to maintain her independence. She learns from him without being reduced to being ‘just a student.’ She stands up to him; she is free to criticize him and the way he treats her—helping to free him from certain cultural and personal biases he has had toward her. They are friends sharing together in an experience of learning and growing in relationship with each other.
How does this analysis inform for me the question as to Lucy’s state-of-soul at the end of the novel? How is she faring? How does she stand in relation to her life and her experiences; to John and M Paul especially? Is she (1) successful and contented, or (2) succeeding in the world, as a teacher, yet still not fully resolved with regard to her losses; first that of her family and second, the loss of M Paul?
On the one hand, she professes her success and attributes it to M Paul’s influence, his gift of the school, and his mentoring of her before he left on his voyage. She is a “genial flame,” “genial” being an adjective related to cheerfulness, cordiality, being warm and amiable, friendly and even affable. On the other hand, we have the three storms she passes through; the first storm being a metaphor for the tragedy of circumstances she underwent during that unnarrated 8-year period between chapter III and chapter IV. Though no actual external ‘storm’ occurred, she uses the metaphor of “storm” to express – without explaining the particulars – how her life became a “shipwreck.” The second “storm” – both an actual and an existential one – brought about her collapse on the steps of the Beguine Church (Chapter XV, “The Long Vacation” ¶’s 54-55); the description of the storm being resonant with that of a storm at sea; herself once again being the ship that is being wrecked. She sank, but then she rose again. The third storm is that which took M Paul. He died in what was probably a massive hurricane on the Atlantic Ocean. What kind of storm did that cause in Lucy’s soul? The reader is not told.
Though the last two storms are actual meteorological events, one can easily imagine, as the reader, what the emotional and psychological effect of those storms might have been upon her. Of the second storm we have an account, as poignant as brief. When she awakes afterwards, she finds herself in a ‘replica’ of the Bretton house she visited as a girl, and muses whether or not she is dreaming or dead and passed over into an Otherworld. Much to her surprise, she finds herself in the company of Mrs Bretton, and is soon reunited with John and Paulina. This fosters a noticeable change in Lucy’s life; she grows and matures through the experience. How does she respond to the third storm and the loss of M Paul? As with the first “storm,” she does not say. In fact, she prevaricates and does not describe the actual events which took place around that loss in any more than a summary way. It takes less than a page to share with us the loss of M Paul Emmanuel!
Only two paragraphs describe the assumed shipwreck at sea in which M Paul was lost. I still sense – as I did on my first read – that her trauma over the loss of M Paul may be manifest in the disruption of her narrative at that point, when she suddenly leaves off a description of the disaster and says:
“Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.” (Chapter XLII, ¶ 17)
Only two lines follow this
disruption, relating the long and happy lives of Madame Beck, Madame Walravens
and Père Silas. As such, the paragraph above first seemed to
me like an evasion of a narrative that could have been given; and perhaps
suggests a reluctance – even an inability – even after a number of years
(untallied in the narrative itself) to face or reconcile herself with what
happened. Or is it simply that she no
longer has any need – psychological or emotional – to go over the story of her
loss of M Paul, once more, now for her readers?
Is she a success and a happy, congenial, etc., person, living the life of a teacher in her own school, thanks to the generosity of M Paul? Does that, or could that possibly, sum her up? Or is this avowal of success a stance – a plausibly necessary one – by and in which she persists in her career over the course of however many years it has been since M Paul’s death, making the most of what she has and trying not to allow the storms that have hit her wreck her ship ultimately?
I am moved by all of these reflections toward the second possibility. I think she had, by the end, steeled herself and lived her life as well as she could, as a reasonably independent woman, given what she has been through, and in that way is a ‘success,’ though not in the superficial sense in which that term is usually bandied about. She has weathered the storms and come through still being functional and able to live as fully as any mortal can in the circumstances in which they find themselves, having made the choices they have made and weathered the consequences resulting from those choices. In Lucy’s case, much of what she has weathered was not a direct result of her choices, but indirectly flows from choices arising through and after what has happened to her. She is a survivor.
Seen in this second sense, I have a great respect for Lucy Snowe, and while I am still trying to understand – much less comprehend – her pilgrim-like journey through the story on many levels; through the various experiences she has had and how she responded to them—and while I don’t think it probable that I will ever ‘understand’ her in any full psychological sense – can anyone really be so understood? (I don’t think so!) – I resonate with her story and will no doubt read this novel again (and again) in the years to come.
The understanding at which I have now arrived regarding Lucy Snowe allows a blending of my initial reaction to the ending with the subsequent emendations – via reading Quales and Chase – showing that there was indeed a positive aspect to it. After all of my reflection on the end of Villette, I am also encouraged to allow this ending to stand as ambiguous; it is ultimately left to us as readers of her story to try and understand her state-of-soul in the later years of her life, when she is a ‘gray-haired old woman.’
To those who have read the novel, would you agree at all with this analysis and the stance I have come to as to Lucy’s state-of-soul at the end of the novel? I would be curious to know.
- Montague Whitsel
Finis
[1] “Jane, Shirley & Lucy Snowe” (28 August 2024) and then “The End of Villette – Reconsidered” (17 October 2024)
[2] “Jar of Confinement” – in Chapter XXVI “A Burial” Lucy engages in what seems to me like an old magical ritual I am familiar with from occult literature, the purpose of which is the containing and/or preserving of some object. Lucy’s going to an old “Broker’s Shoppe,” whereat she found a jar in amongst “ancient” things and then the way in which she treated it (¶’s 23-27), sealing John’s letters within it and then burying it, reminds me very much of this old occult ritual. That she buries the jar beneath the old, mysterious Methuselah tree – beneath which a nun was said to have been buried alive – connects the ritual with the protective forces of the Underworld.
[3] In 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.” -- which stings Lucy’s conscience and her understanding of her relationship with John.
