"Villette" by Charlotte Bronte

Posted by Riklaa on September 5, 2009 at 7:32pm
Villette (pronounced /viːˈjɛt/) is a novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1853. After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance. The novel is celebrated not so much for its plot as its acute tracing of Lucy’s psychology, particularly Brontë’s use of Gothic doubling to represent externally what her protagonist is suffering internally. In 1842, Brontë traveled to Brussels with her sister Emily, where they enrolled in a pensionnat (boarding school) run by M. and Mme. Constantin Héger. In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the pensionnat was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt who had joined the family after the death of their mother to look after the children, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the pensionnat. Her second stay at the pensionnat was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick and fell in love with M. Héger. She finally returned to her family's rectory at Haworth in January 1844. Brontë drew on this source material for her first, unsuccessful novel The Professor. After several publishers rejected this early work, Brontë reworked the material as a basis for Villette. In particular, most literary historians believe the character of M. Paul Emanuel to be closely based on M. Héger. Furthermore, the character of Graham Bretton is widely acknowledged to have been modelled on Brontë's publisher, George Murray Smith, who was at one time a potential suitor. Villette is most commonly celebrated for its explorations of gender roles and repression. In addition, critics have explored the issues of Lucy's psychological state in terms of the patriarchal constructs that form her cultural context Villette also incisively explores isolation and cross-cultural conflict in Lucy’s attempts to master the French language, as well as the conflicts between her English Protestantism and the Catholicism (her denunciation of which is unsparing: 'God is not with Rome') of Labassecour. In 1970 it was adapted for a TV Miniseries and it was a 3 hr dadio serial in 1999. In this,it's latest incarnation for the BBC the novel was adapted as a two week-long serial for BBC Radio 4, directed by Tracey Neale. with Anna Maxwell Martin as Lucy.This summary was condensed from Wikipedia. 10 part serial and Intro 2009 Intro,Chapters 1 and 2

090803a_villette_intro.mp3

090803b_villette_ep01.mp3

090804_villette_ep02.mp3

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