Charlotte Bronte's Villette Essay

Charlotte Bronte’s Villette is described by Steven Millhauser as a “story of two unconsummated loves” however “beneath this plot runs a darker story” this is expressed through Bronte’s descriptive writing and is clearly evident in this passage. Villette was Charlotte Bronte’s final novel written at a time of great loneliness for Bronte which is directly paralleled within the novel. Bronte particularly highlights the effects of language and imagery in this passage; using symbolism to form an image in the readers mind, which can be seen in this passage. The role of women remains a great focal point in Charlotte Bronte’s novel, exploring the struggle of women in realising self-independence. With a subjective, first person narrator, it's structure …show more content…
It begins with the sense on an enclosed atmosphere with the idea of the “theatre [being] full – crammed to its roof” giving the sense of being enclosed with little chance of escaping. Bronte continually presents stark contrasts between images such as the idea that those in the theatre to be “royal and noble” but then disregards this by referring to them as being “inmates” suggesting a sense of realisation that although they are perceived to be that of nobility they are criminals. The use of term “inmates” Bronte is reaffirming the sense of imprisonment and little chance for …show more content…
But a materialist interpretation of the work finds a much larger issue at stake. We see constant reminders of the gothic aspect of the novel, particularly in this passage, her “regal face” is then soon after contrasted to a “demoniac mask” as we progress through this passage, and the theme seems to be becoming increasingly gothic in its language using such vocabulary as “Hate and Murder and Madness” and “seven devils” as a reference to the Bible and the seven deadly sins. Brontë's use of Gothic and Romantic aspects of Villette not only represents a re-emergence of Romantic ideas about personal liberty and the freedom of the imagination to foreground the conservative, reactionary aspect of Victorian society but she also anticipates Freud's later nineteenth and early twentieth century psychoanalytical work on the uncanny - the uncanny being something familiar and meaningful from the past that re-emerges in strange ways. That, I suggest, is what happens with Romanticism in Villette - it resurfaces in the form of a radical Victorian gothic that ignites the potential of the imagination. Uncanniness runs thorough Villette, with characters reappearing