Villette
About this ebook
Charlotte Bronte’s final and most autobiographical novel—even more critically acclaimed than Jane Eyre during its time—is a brilliant story of repressed passion and unrequited love in the fictional French town of Villette
Lucy Snowe is a young woman alone in the world after a terrible event of which she never speaks. With no home, no family, and no prospects, she sets out on her own to the small French town of Villette, where she finds work as a governess at a boarding school for girls. When a handsome doctor from her past appears in Villette, Lucy believes she may at last be free of loneliness—if her rigorous self-control doesn’t conceal her true feelings.
Based on Charlotte Bronte’s own experiences at a boarding school in Belgium, Villette is an intense psychological portrait of its heroine, a woman who so strenuously tries to hide her passions that she cannot help but reveal them.
About the author
Charlotte Brontë, born in 1816, was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters, and one of the nineteenth century's greatest novelists. She is the author of Villette, The Professor, several collections of poetry, and Jane Eyre, one of English literature's most beloved classics. She died in 1855.
Mallory Ortberg is the cofounder of The Toast blog and the author of Texts from Jane Eyre. She lives in Oakland, California.
