Villette: a wonderful novel

[prendrelemick]

I thought Elizabeth Gaskell's work a blatant panegyric.

Well, I suppose even Mrs Gaskell wanted to sell as many books as possible and chose her narrative accordingly. The heroine triumphing over almost unsurmountable difficulties and disadvantages will never go out of fashion.

I ought to confess here I haven't read it, so don't really know what I'm talking about!

[prendrelemick]

When I read “secrets locked in the attic” I thought of Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. She learns (from her rival) that her boyfriend has deserted her and chooses to say nothing to anyone and at the same time deal with her sister’s hysterical reaction to the same situation.

Elinor’s silence is heroic, but not self righteous. She is an angel in the house of an all female household.

PS. I haven’t read Vilette for years. I remember at the time thinking it was the most depressing novel I’d ever read. But I was going through a bad patch.

Could Jane be the two Dashwood sisters joined together? A mixture of sense and sensibility.

[Danik 2016]

Well, I suppose even Mrs Gaskell wanted to sell as many books as possible and chose her narrative accordingly. The heroine triumphing over almost unsurmountable difficulties and disadvantages will never go out of fashion.

I ought to confess here I haven't read it, so don't really know what I'm talking about!

Thanks for your links about Patrick Brontë. Unfortunally I at present know only one good library on English Literature and it is in an university that´s on strike. As importing these books have become rather expensive I have to rely mainly on on-line material.
Mrs. Gaskell only came to know Charlotte in the last part of her life when the latter was already a famous author. Judging from the biography it wasn´t a very close relationship.
The biografy of Charlotte was written at the request of Patrick Brontë, who at first seemed not to object to the book only after criticism started. What one notices is that Mrs. Gaskell takes great care to quote from her sources. Even so there are parts that generated great controversy. One of them was the narrative of the childhood of the Brontës. Two of the maids felt themselvrs so misrepresented in the biography, that they asked P. Brontë for a testimony.
Anyway this site is a feast for Brontë fans:
http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/
One can find not only the novels and poems by them but also shorter and earlier texts.
There is also Mrs Gaskell´s biography(about 700 p)and other older biographies and critical evaluations.

[prendrelemick]

I've just read the first few pages of Lizzie's Life of Charlotte and now I know where the archetypal Yorkshire Man comes from! - Independent, tight fisted, over confident, taciturn, fast friend, implacable enemy. I'm going to get a T shirt with it on.

Now the question is, if Gaskell invented The Brontes, did she inadvertently invent The Yorkshireman as well?

[Jackson Richardson]

But Mrs G came from the wrong side of the Pennines !

[prendrelemick]

True, but she lays it on thick about Yorkshiremen and their strange ways.

I have an image of a coterie of genteel lady tourists clutching their Gaskill, staring at a local waiting for him to thrill them with a harsh retort.


http://www.online-literature.com/eli...otte_bronte/2/

[kelby_lake]

I find Villette such a heart-breakingly sad novel. Lucy's feeling of complete isolation and deprived of love, without wanting to be simplistic, sounds like depression to me. It's a very incisive portrayal of a state of mind.