Villette
Villette,a novel by C. Brontë , published 1853 .
The novel, like its predecessor The Professor (then unpublished), is based on the author's experiences in Brussels, here renamed Villette, and also has as its centre a pupil–teacher relationship. The narrator, Lucy Snowe , poor, plain, and friendless, finds herself a post as teacher in a girls' school in Villette, where she wins the respect of the capable, if unscrupulous, headmistress, Mme Beck, and gains authority over the boisterous girls. She becomes deeply attached to the handsome John Bretton, the school's English doctor, in whom she recognizes an acquaintance from her childhood, the son of her own godmother; she watches his infatuation with the shallow and flirtatious Ginevra Fanshawe, followed by a happier love for his childhood friend Paulina Home, and represses her own strong feelings for him. These feelings gradually attach themselves to the waspish, despotic,...
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