The three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne each published works during the Victorian era. Villette uses the biographical structure commonly seen in traditional Victorian literature but deviates somewhat due to its autobiographical nature. Many of the events that happen to the protagonist of the story mirror the events in the author's life. Like Lucy, Charlotte Brontë experienced family tragedy when her mother died. Brontë also left home in pursuit of a teaching job, suffered from loneliness and experienced unrequited love. Charlotte Brontë’s final masterpiece powerfully portrays a woman struggling to reconcile love, jealousy, and a fierce desire for independence. The novel is initially set in the English countryside and later follows Lucy Snowe to the fictional Belgian town of Villette, a Gothic town where the majority of the action takes place. Having fled a harrowing past in England, Lucy Snowe begins a new life teaching at a boarding school in the great capital of a foreign country. There, as she tries to achieve independence from both outer necessity and inward grief, she finds that her feelings for a worldly doctor and a dictatorial professor threaten her hard-won self-possession. The theme of independence is present throughout the story. Lucy is quite passive at the beginning of the novel but grows into a very independent woman, particularly for the era in which the story is set. You can listen online to free English audiobook “Villette” by Charlotte Brontë on our website.
