Reading Rambo

........wait.



So...ok.

Villette has ended and...huh.




I was totally set to talk about Lucy's drug haze romp through a carnival, but then the ending of the book happened and now my brain is just perplexed and trying to figure out what exactly Charlotte Bronte's game is here, because wait what.

What are we thinking about this. So Lucy is given everything she wants, and sets herself up a la Jane Eyre, down to the "oh, you suddenly got money from someone in your past who wronged you and are now a lady of independent means," and then the ending happens and it's this weird fizzle of a nothing. 

MAYBE IT'S EXTREMELY DARING. It's probably that. The problem in my brain is it reminds me, like some other things in Villette, of Wuthering Heights. Just this crashing storm and wild prose and weird imprecations to heaven and then this danced-around ending that reminded me also of the stories I used to write in 5th grade where everyone dies, only finally I wrote some postscr…

This...is a bonnet-grec. If you search "smoking cap" you will find a vast assortment of vaguely similar and horrifying hats. This is what M. Paul wears basically all the time.

And how about that M. Paul. How about that guy. Huh. He's got some pretty major red flags where, if Lucy were my friend, I'd be going "helllllllllllllll no," but Lucy HAS no friends.

You know what? Wait. That is bullshit. Lucy totally has friends. Lucy just doesn't like anyone. Except for Pauline, which she acknowledged was an abnormality. People try to be Lucy's friend and Lucy basically tells them to fuck off, which, to be honest, I kind of enjoy. Especially her amazing series of exchanges with Ginevra. She's constantly either sarcastic or flat-out mean to her, and Ginevra's just like "haha whatever bestiiiiiies."


But seriously, I know we always out someone in these Victorian readalongs, but Lucy seems straight as an arrow and our ONLY candidate seems to be Gi…

Behold! Almost 2/3 done. Next week is Chapters 27 through 33. This week, Lucy Snowe continues to be weird, and Graham keeps saying unsettling things to his mother that make me think those two need to make some other friends. Or maybe have Lucy move in. You guys are making everyone uncomfortable with your Titania/Bottom talk and your "Mother, you are better to me than ten wives yet." That wouldn't fly in 2015, sir. Please, CB, be aware of norms in future eras and adapt your books accordingly.

Lucy was mainly obsessed with letters in this section. Letters from Graham. Also tiny Paulina showed up again as we all knew she would because oh, isn't it nice dramatically to have her come around again. Also -- CHARLOTTE. Why has everyone from your character's past moved to the same Belgian town. WHY. I have suspended my disbelief for your book, but there are limits. 


I am unsure about other people's dealings with waited-for letters/emails/whatever, but I thought the sect…

Villette is damn astounding. People try to "write fiction" and end up giving us something fake and mechanized, and while it can occasionally be entertaining, it is not humanity written down on paper.

VILLETTE. You're such a weird mix of overly-fanciful prose and Charlotte Bronte's obvious angst spilling into her book. Everyone in her life had died except her father, and who knows about that relationship. She'd started out with four sisters and a brother and in 1853 she was alone. At 37 years old. Lucy Snowe just pours her damn self into this book and doesn't care if you like it or not. CB's struggles with depression and attempts to continue life after her family was gone are just there on the page. I mean, good LORD:

She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's thres…