Return to Resources

Villette, Chapters 1-9

1. What do we learn about the narrator in the opening sections? What do we learn about her attitude toward others, her background, and her character? Does she seem to change?

2. What do you think of her judgments of the character and manners of others?

3. What are some features of Bronte’s style? Use of imagery? Does she employ irony?

4. What are some advantages the use of the first-person narrator brings to the novel? Are there disadvantages? Is this narrator completely reliable?

5. What do we learn from the scenes with Paulina Mary, Mrs. Bretton and her son? Are they fond of one another, and of Lucy? 6. Why do you think Lucy’s story is not given in chronological order?

7. What is notable about Miss Marchmont, and her death? What may be the purpose of including this episode?

8. What is notable about Lucy Snowe’s journey to London? Her trip to Brussells and arrival at the Pensionnat of Madame Beck?

9. What observations does Bronte seem to make on the class structure of England and Belgium? The circumstances of single women without family? What importance do servants and officials have in the story? To what social class does Lucy belong, and how is this manifested in her responses?

10. What do we know about Lucy from her reactions to others during the journey? to the handsome stranger? to Ginevra?

11. Which aspects of Lucy’s story may have been autobiographical? (Bronte attended a school in Belgium, and later became a teacher there.)

12. What attitudes does Bronte’s narrator express toward religion? Toward English, French and Irish national character? Would these views have been common in her time?

13. What use does the novel make of the French language? Of French-inflected English?

What importance is placed on a character’s ability to speak another language?

14. How is Madame Beck characterized? What is her most surprising trait? Does Lucy resent her surveillance? Which of Lucy’s beliefs arouses most resistence?

15. What seem to be some of Bronte’s views on the education of the young? What methods does Lucy use to subdue a large class? Are some of the problems she faced still dealt with by teachers today?

16. What do we learn of the inner life of Lucy? (77) Of her response to challenges?

17. What does Lucy seem to believe about the behaviors proper to men and women respectively? (77)

18. How does the fact that Lucy enters a foreign country add interest to the plot?

19. What are ways in which Lucy’s behavior reflects and violates Victorian norms for women? How is she able to negotiate these separate impulses?

20. What religious differences affect Lucy’s adaptation to Labassecour?

21. Are elements of humor embedded in the narration?

22. What do you make of Lucy’s relationship to Ginevra? What is at issue in their discussion of clothes?

23. Does the portrait of Ginevra seem believable and consistent?

24. Why do you think Lucy pays such close attention to the behavior of someone of whom she disapproves? What seems the author’s purpose in including the episode in which Lucy and Ginevra discuss the latter’s acceptance of money from “Isidore”? .