Skip to main content

Villette in March! A Timely Reminder

I'm pretty sure everyone forgot but ONE WEEK FROM TODAY we are starting Villette by Charlotte Bronte. Signup post is here. Next Tuesday, 3/3 is our first post, and it's chapters 1-5. We're gonna knock this one out. Slowly. And lazily. But still. Knock it right out.


"What do you know about Villette, Alice?"

Well, nothing, but after having skimmed some things, I can tell you that it is CB's third novel, and if Wikipedia isn't full of shit, its main themes are "isolation, how such a condition can be borne, and the internal conflict brought about by social repression of individual desire."

SO LET'S ALL BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THOSE.

Based on some minor plot spoilers I've read, there's also possibly a parallel between the novel and that time Charlotte Bronte went to Brussels or something and fell in love with her teacher M. Heger and wrote him a series of embarrassing letters until his wife said "Cut that out right now."

This isolation and social repression thing makes total sense though if we think about the Brontes. 'Cause where'd they live? Nowheresville. So they had a certain amount of freedom to be weird (which Emily just ran with) but when they encountered society at large, and certainly I imagine when CB started hanging out in London, they had to curb that weirdness. I mean, if today we occasionally feel like Society is keeping us down, 1850s England must have been maddening.

Oh, I am looking forward to the discussion around this book.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't

How to Build a Girl Introductory Post, which is full of wonderful things you probably want to read

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop ( Odyssey Books , where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have. I feel like we could get to this point, Emily INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy