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Villette (Signet Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Charlotte Bronte
Creator: Helen Benedict
Publisher: Signet Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $5.95
Buy New: $2.57
You Save: $3.38 (57%)
New (33) Used (17) from $2.57
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 60598
Media: Paperback
Pages: 592
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0451529227
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780451529220
ASIN: 0451529227
Publication Date: February 3, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: GREAT BUY!Brand New From US Distributor! WE ARE A 5 STAR SELLER with OVER 3,500,000 BOOKS SOLD!!! OVER ~ 675,000 FEEDBACKS ~ POSTED!!!
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Product Description
Bronte's romantic heroine Lucy Snowe, a penniless governess attempting to begin life anew in France, is an exceptional example of a great writer transforming her life into art.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 An amazing feminist novel from 1859! June 4, 2005
A. Landau (NY, NY)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
It was her last completed book, always in the shadow of Jane Eyre. It was insightful, irreverent, angry, tragic, funny, bizarre, gothic and wonderfully honest. At the time, the novel was harshly criticized by men, even feminist men like George Eliot's lover. But George Eliot herself and Virginia Wolf believed it to be her best work.
How unusual first of all to have a heroine like Lucy Snowe, not of noble blood, not rich, not charming, not even good-looking as women (esp in the Victorian period) were expected to be. Like the other characters, she is flawed, contradictory and multi-faceted in a way one rarely sees in literature but continually witnesses in real life. Yet she is decidedly brilliant, original and imaginative like no other. Unconventional and delightfully subversive!
In many ways, this is a truly modern novel to this day. I've never read a novel that so honestly and unflinchingly captures the plight of a woman-artist making her own way in the world despite the obstacles thrown in her path.
Charlotte Bronte's Best Work July 5, 2005
Professorlilith
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
As far as I'm concerned, Virginia Woolf had it right. This is Charlotte Bronte's best work, even if it isn't nearly as well known as _Jane Eyre_. I re-read it every few years; it's one of my favorites. It's a sort of coming-of-age story written from the perspective of a young woman who has nothing, not even a smidgeon of self-esteem, but who manages to build a life for herself where she has friends and meaningful work. I suppose that sounds a little dull, but Bronte is such an acute observor of people that every character is three-dimensional. The main character, Lucy, changes throughout the book, and her topics of discussion, her word choices, even her sentence structure slowly evolve with her, illustrating her growth. It's unsentimental and unromanticized, but I do like all the characters in it, even with all their flaws.
More questions than answers May 15, 2006
Kristin Chadderton (Baltimore, MD USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Villette - astonishing! Difficult to decide whether this is a book to love or loathe; no middle ground seems possible. Lucy Snowe is a compelling, engaging narrator; her sharp sarcasm pricks holes in the most inflated personalities and makes us laugh at life's absurdities. But at the same time, Bronte's level-headed narrator is caught in a morass of despair and loneliness from which she never completely escapes. The storyline becomes enmeshed in a dark, surreal web, unsettling and discouraging; this reviewer almost gave up on the book halfway through. Lucy Snowe, like Jane Eyre, can find beauty in unlikely places; but unlike her earlier counterpart, it seems that happiness, for Lucy at least, is too good to be real.
Engaging, poetic, thought-provoking, skilfully created, deeply unsettling and profoundly dark. A mysterious, tragic narrative.
Beautiful use of description August 23, 2006
lucysnow (Seattle, WA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Villette has always been my favorite book. The use of language and description is superior to her other works. I wouldn't need to see a movie of this book, I already feel like I walked in the garden or sat in one of the classrooms. When I first read the ending, I actually loved it, and still do.
 Unswallowable August 25, 2007
Anonymous (New Orleans)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
(*POSSIBLE spoiler alert, although I'm trying not to give away anymore than is necessary to explain what I didn't like about the book.)
I appreciate Victorian novels, among which Jane Eyre is one of my favorites. I am more than willing to make allowances for the conventions of Victorian novels, such as the plot turning on unreasonable coincidences. But Villette just has far too many coincidences to swallow. A poor, friendless English orphan crosses the Channel, and once on the other side she she meets any number of fellow Britons, every single one of whom she is closely related to in one way or another.
But worse, Charlotte Bronte is unfair to the reader in Villette -- she tells the reader that certain things are true, but which are completely implausible for any human being, and completely out of characters for the characters whom she has just sketched. I can't elaborate without giving away spoilers, but the loves, the hates, the jealousies, and the forgivenesses all ring false. This is just a trainwreck of a book, and can't hold a candle to Jane Eyre.
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