Where novels are written in the first person, it is a common and unfortunate feature for the least interesting person to be the narrator. Villette is one such novel. Written by Charlotte Bronte in the nineteenth century, Villette is a collection of the life and times of Lucy Snow - an orphaned child - whose cool temperament, intelligence and insight allow her to overcome the disadvantages of having no family and to eventually establish her own pensionnat (school) in a northern French town (of the same name as the book). And while the characters that she meets range from the fascinating to the merely peculiar, her own life is so steady and 'plain jane' that a stroll through the countryside is all you can ever expect from this book.

However Villette does have it's quirks. For example, as most of the book is set in France, there is a mix of language which makes an interesting challenge for all those whose knowledge of French extends little beyond the reach of GCSE. In addition to this, the English used is embellished, rich and variegated, causing you to make endless deference to your dictionary and allowing little deviation in the way you interpret the nature of the characters involved.

The book starts off with Snow recounting one of the many biannual visits she made to her godmothers as a child. During Lucy's visit the reader is introduced to various characters all of whom reappear later in the book: Mrs. Bretton of course, godmother of Lucy Snow, well off widower and kindly woman to boot; Graham Bretton the cheeky but diligent sixteen year old son of Mrs. Bretton, the recenlty widowed Mr. Home; and his precocious daughter Paulina Home whose seven year old presence was forced on to the Brettons as the consequence of the mourning Mr. Home wishing for some space to partake in travelling and manly retrospection.

Not surprisingly, it was the sufferable Paulina who stole the show in the early chapters of the book. Her most striking characteristic was the way in which she stuck to her father like a limpet - possibly the consequence of her mother's recent bereavement. But bereavement or not, and admitting that it may be a little harsh to critique the personality of a seven year old, whilst Paulina was adored by everyone she was detested by I. The way in which she smothered her father was quite sickening, her suffocating affection most manifest at breakfast times, when she would insist that she was to pass her father every condiment and container he needed, not trusting the ability or worthiness of another sole in this capacity. Her honesty, whinging and suffocating affection were enough to wish a second family bereavement on her. So infuriating was her personality that when she appeared in the life of Lucy Snow, quite by chance, ten years later and as an anonymous girl prostrate on a theatre floor having been trampled on by a herd of humans escaping a fire, her identity was unmistakably released in her reply to a caring sole who had labelled her a wounded child, 'I am not a child - I am a person of seventeen. Tell papa to come; I get quite anxious'.

After leaving the Brettons, Lucy Snow moves on to nurse an old woman in her dying years and the story really gets kicking when the old woman finally bites the dust, leaving Lucy with a pocketful of money and thoughts of foreign travel on her mind. Through luck and sheer coincidence Lucy manages to land a job in a French school for girls in the northern town of Villette. There she is taken under the wing of the owner of the pensionnat, Madame Beck, an extremely level headed character with a desire for control so profound that it leads her to regular rifling through the documents of each of her employees.

Once in Villette, it is not long before Lucy bumps into all the old acquaintances that she made ten years earlier at Mrs. Brettons. The incredible co-incidence of all the people in Mrs. Bretton's bumping into each other is just too much! No doubt it makes for exciting reading - but what are the odds of three different families having congregated in a small insignificant English village for some small period of time, losing touch with each other and then tripping over each other years later in some industrial town in the north of France?

The main theme of the book is loneliness. Although the book makes no clear reference to the familial situation of Lucy Snow it is clear that she suffered some kind of bereavement in the latter years of her childhood, causing her to experience desolation and desperation throughout the next ten years of her adolescent life. The most poignant part of the book comes when Lucy having re-acquainted herself with the tenuous friendship of Graham Bretton at a very low and lonesome point in her life, is driven to the point of madness as she experiences the tortuous emotions only a truly lonely person experiences when a brief and precarious flicker of light is presented at the end of a miserable tunnel that one forgets one was resident in. Aside from the deft touch with which Bronte captures the exact nature of loneliness, and the freak reunions which gives one a marvellous sense of envelopment, this book is glue to the fingers in the way the sub-plot twists, turns and interrelates so as to render the main plot pleasant enough, if rather dull. I shall leave you with a moment from Lucy's thoughts when she arrives at a hotel in London during her whimsical trip to northern France to find work.

I kept up well till I had partaken of some refreshment, warmed myself by the fire, and was fairly shut into my own room; but as I sat down by the bed and rested my head and arms on the pillow, a terrible oppression overcame me. All at once my position rose on me like a ghost. Anomalous, desolate, almost blank of hope, it stood. What was I doing here alone in great London? What should I do on the morrow? What prospects had I in life? What friends had I on earth? Where did I come? Whither should I go? What should I do?

Charllotte Bronte
Villette
Penguin Popular Classics: Harmondsworth
1853