Villette (Penguin Classics)

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But it is love as the woman understands it. And here again is their second strength. Their peculiar vision, their omissions quite as much as their assertions, make them welcome. Balzac, Flaubert, Anatole France, Paul Bourget, dissect a complex reality, half physical, half moral; they are students, psychologists, men of science first, poets afterwards. Review of Emma Brown by Charlotte Cory". The Independent. 13 September 2003. Archived from the original on 19 September 2011 . Retrieved 12 June 2013. Of all the characters, Dr. John no doubt is the least tangible, the least alive. Here the writer was drawing enough from reality to spoil the freedom of imagination that worked so happily in the creation of Paulina, and not enough to give to her work that astonishing and complex truth which marks the portrait of Paul Emanuel. On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin Héger after leaving Brussels in 1844. [61] Written in French except for one postscript in English, the letters broke the prevailing image of Brontë as an angelic martyr to Christian and female duties that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell. [61] The letters, which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Héger frequently appears not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, although they are complex and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an example of literary self-dramatisation and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil. [61] Few—I flatter myself—have earned an equal distinction, and of course my feelings towards it can only be paralleled by those of a doting parent towards an idiot child.

Shorter, Clement King (19 September 2013). The Brontës Life and Letters: Being an Attempt to Present a Full and Final Record of the Lives of the Three Sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108065238 . Retrieved 2 February 2019– via Google Books. Villette itself, in portions that are clearly autobiographical, bears curious testimony to the French reading, which stirred and liberated Charlotte’s genius, as Hofmann’s tales gave spur and impetus to Emily. It was a fortunate chance that thus brought to bear upon her at a critical moment a force so strong and kindred, a force starting from a Celt like herself, from the Breton Chateaubriand.

Charlotte Brontë Novels

Tolbert, L. (2018). Images of race and the influence of abolition in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (PDF) (Masters thesis) . Retrieved 8 February 2022.

Lee, Colin (2004). "Currer, Frances Mary Richardson (1785–1861)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.1. Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/6951 . Retrieved 1 November 2014. The step in contemplation is no hasty one; on the gentleman’s side at least, it has been meditated for many years, and I hope that in at last acceding to it, I am acting right; it is what I earnestly wish to do. My future husband is a clergyman. He was for eight years my father’s curate. He left because the idea of this marriage was not entertained as he wished. Words so desolately, bitterly true were never penned till the spirit that conceived them had itself drunk to the lees the cup of lonely pain. But though she is Jane Eyre over again there are differences, and all, it seems to me, to Lucy’s advantage. She is far more intelligible—truer to life and feeling. Morbid she is often; but Lucy Snows so placed, and so gifted, must have been morbid.

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The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.” There is an interesting and, for the most part, unpublished letter to Mr. George Smith, still in existence, which throws light upon this disappointment of hers—a disappointment which to us is pure gain, since it produced Villette. In spite of her gaiety of tone, it is evident that she is sensitive in the matter, and a little wounded— Alexander, Christine; Sellars, Jane (1995). The Art of the Brontës. Cambridge University Press. p. 402. ISBN 978-0-521-43248-1. It shows how profoundly the fiery dæmonic element in Miss Brontë had answered to the like gift in Rachel; and it bears testimony once more to the close affinity between her genius and those more passionate and stormy influences let loose in French culture by the romantic movement.