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poliphiloI used to think Villette (by analogy with Jane Eyre) was a person's name. No-one disabused me because no-one seems to know the book. It puzzles me how a major novel by a much-loved author can remain so obscure. It's not as if it were boring.
Posterity does this. It fixates on one or two books by an author and neglects the rest. It doesn't always pick the right books. I've been making a habit recently of reading the lesser known works of well known authors. H.G. Wells' masterpiece is Tono-Bungay. Mary Rose is a better play than Peter Pan. No Name is at least as good as The Woman in White. I believe many of the critics think Villette is better than Jane Eyre. I wouldn't know because I haven't read Jane Eyre.
What a confession- An Eng-Lit graduate who hasn't read Jane Eyre! Well I will. I've been put off all these years by feeling I already knew the story. Elizabeth Taylor dies, Orson Welles gallops about on a handsome black stallion, There is a madwoman in the attic, the house burns down.
Villette eschews that kind of melodrama. Bronte is moving on. We will, she proposes, follow the lives of a bunch of ordinary, seemingly well-adjusted people in a fictitious town that is probably Brussels. (How many great British novels are set in Belgium?) On the surface it could almost be Jane Austen. The characterization is acute- not a single dummy in the cast- there is social satire, the dialogue is lively and the plot turns on a choice of beaux- an airy gentleman and a nutter. Nothing much happens. Lucy (our narrator) teaches school and has professional relationships, she goes to the theatre, visits are paid, flirtation happens, courtship happens, there is a ghost... Hang on a minute! A ghost? Yes, because actually this isn't like Austen at all. Under the surface passion roils and boils. Prim little Lucy in her grey dress and sensible shoes is a romantic poet. "Her" writing has a saturated texture. Why use one adjective when three will do? Go on- add a fourth! Similes fork and put out twigs. There is Biblical imagery.
Nature glares and glooms, angels flit in and out, perspectives open onto eternity. And all the while the little life goes on. A schoolmaster takes his charges on a day trip into the country, rolls are spread with butter.
Posterity does this. It fixates on one or two books by an author and neglects the rest. It doesn't always pick the right books. I've been making a habit recently of reading the lesser known works of well known authors. H.G. Wells' masterpiece is Tono-Bungay. Mary Rose is a better play than Peter Pan. No Name is at least as good as The Woman in White. I believe many of the critics think Villette is better than Jane Eyre. I wouldn't know because I haven't read Jane Eyre.
What a confession- An Eng-Lit graduate who hasn't read Jane Eyre! Well I will. I've been put off all these years by feeling I already knew the story. Elizabeth Taylor dies, Orson Welles gallops about on a handsome black stallion, There is a madwoman in the attic, the house burns down.
Villette eschews that kind of melodrama. Bronte is moving on. We will, she proposes, follow the lives of a bunch of ordinary, seemingly well-adjusted people in a fictitious town that is probably Brussels. (How many great British novels are set in Belgium?) On the surface it could almost be Jane Austen. The characterization is acute- not a single dummy in the cast- there is social satire, the dialogue is lively and the plot turns on a choice of beaux- an airy gentleman and a nutter. Nothing much happens. Lucy (our narrator) teaches school and has professional relationships, she goes to the theatre, visits are paid, flirtation happens, courtship happens, there is a ghost... Hang on a minute! A ghost? Yes, because actually this isn't like Austen at all. Under the surface passion roils and boils. Prim little Lucy in her grey dress and sensible shoes is a romantic poet. "Her" writing has a saturated texture. Why use one adjective when three will do? Go on- add a fourth! Similes fork and put out twigs. There is Biblical imagery.
Nature glares and glooms, angels flit in and out, perspectives open onto eternity. And all the while the little life goes on. A schoolmaster takes his charges on a day trip into the country, rolls are spread with butter.
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Date: 2012-01-17 11:44 am (UTC)Oddly enough when he destroyed all her letters by ripping them up and putting them into the waste paper basket years later, it was his mrs who took them out and stuck them back together again. Probably aware they might have some value on the market.
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Date: 2012-01-17 11:57 am (UTC)Paul Emmanuel is such an attractive chap- in his nutty, Jesuitical way. I'm a little in love with him myself.
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Date: 2012-01-17 01:56 pm (UTC)I understand Hitchcock wanted to film it. I wish he had.
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Date: 2012-01-17 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-01-17 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 04:28 pm (UTC)In the round I'd have though that particular coup de theatre- and a number of others- would have been impossible to manage.
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Date: 2012-01-17 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-01-17 04:59 pm (UTC)Barrie wrote for the proscenium arch just as Shakespeare wrote for the projecting stage of the Globe.
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Date: 2012-01-17 05:03 pm (UTC)Little Dorrit was the first Dickens I read as an adult- and it remains my favourite for reasons that have little to do with its intrinsic quality.
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Date: 2012-01-17 11:38 pm (UTC)That's beautiful.
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