The Brontë Project 2021 discussion

Let's discuss Villette up to and including Chapter XXI - Reaction!

I enjoyed these chapters very much. CB can really draw her characters. I start thinking of them as people. I was furious that Lucy had to work on her holidays and I was rooting for her to have some fun. Being with “her” people was good.
I think that her sickness looks like depression.

I can honestly say that I am really getting into the story. Funny, when I do not have to read this for a class, I do not find it a chore, but an enjoyable book! I am beginning to like Lucy as a character and as a narrator. I enjoy her interaction with Ginevra, a person I found rather reprehensible and silly. I am torn, though, about whether Graham or M Paul will be the one to win Lucy's heart in the end. I find myself comparing Graham to Laurie and M Paul to M Bere in Little Women. I feel that M Paul will probably be the one to win out in the end. I am forcing myself not to look at the final chapter to see whom Lucy winds up with. I will just have to wait and see!

After reading these first chapters of volume 2, Lucy Snowe is starting to grow on me. She's very introspective and occasionally holds back some information. The revelation of who Dr. John was surprised me, but I think Lucy had her suspicions long before it was revealed to us. There was a chapter in the first volume where she's watching him intently, studying his face. It seemed more to me than just looking at someone who's attractive, there was some kind of intent there.
It will be interesting to see who she's going to end up with. I suspect it will be M. Paul. Then again, she might end up alone, because it seems to me that Charlotte Bronte put so much of herself in this story.

I am really starting to like this story! For me what really stood out were some common tropes in Charlotte Bronte's works--the way she pushes at the boundaries of how women should be like. The scene where she looks at the paintings of Cleopatra and La vir d'une femme was really powerful for me!
Something that jumped out at me was in Chapter 20 when she described the clothing as "in the costume of a Chinese lady of rank" in a rather flamboyant flashy manner. As a Chinese myself, I (was seriously not offended) have always been rather intrigued by how these Asian references crept into Western literature--it reveals so much about the knowledge, the impressions literary writers had of the East.