November Meetup: Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Please join us in November when we discuss Villette
by Charlotte Brontë

Some critics, including George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) and Virginia Woolf, considered Villette to be Charlotte Brontë’s best novel. This is quite a statement, considering that Charlotte Brontë also wrote Jane Eyre.

The organizer takes no stand on which of the two very different novels, Jane Eyre or Villette, is the better work, but simply rejoices that they both exist.

Images above: George Richmond portrait of Charlotte Brontë and self-sketch by Charlotte Brontë

Location: ZOOM

Villette is a long book. Get started reading it early !!

Villette contains a fair number of French sentences and phrases. The only edition I have seen that translates them into English is the hardcopy Barnes and Noble edition with notes by Laura Engel. (I don’t know if this is also true of the B&N eBook edition.)

Another good choice would be to download either a free PDF or free eBook, and copy and paste each French sentence as it comes up into Google Translate. Free downloads are available at

https://web.archive.org/web/20090105162436/http://girlebooks.com/ebook-catalog/charlotte-bronte/vilette/

and

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Villette_(1st_edition)

We are now meeting once a month, usual last Tuesday of the month, online via Zoom until the threat from the COVID-19 pandemic ceases.

The discussion will start at the normal 6:30 PM time. Please sign in 5 minutes early so that we are all ready to start promptly on time. If you have not used Zoom before, I suggest you download it sometime before the meeting starts.

Teaser on Amazon:

"Fleeing an unhappy past in England, penniless Lucy Snowe starts life anew at a boarding school in cosmopolitan Villette, a stand-in for Brussels. The mystery, jealousy, and love that she finds there give Charlotte Brontë’s final novel much of the Gothic tone and psychological incisiveness that prompted George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and others to call Villette her finest work. Based on Brontë’s own experiences in Brussels and her attachment to a brilliant teacher with a strong and eccentric personality, this superb romantic novel is an exceptional example of how a great writer transforms the ordinary events of her life into vivid and exciting art. Villette represents the inimitable Brontë genius by giving us a masterful portrait of Lucy Snowe, who belongs beside the great nineteenth-century literary heroines—and who will strongly appeal to modern readers."