Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)

General notes

• 15 Lucy's "overheated and discursive imagination" vs Paulina
• Paulina's monomania - Nelly says heathcliff is a monomaniac in Wuthering
• 17 "cup did not foam up" when Paulina and father reunited --CB dampening melodramatic expectations as in first chapter of shirley
• 20 Graham to Paulina: "I reckon on being able to get out of you a little of that precious commodity called amusement"
  • a pre Marxian sense, as Freedgood 2006 would say
• 23 graham threatening to cut up the engraving Paulina likes to light candles
• 34 race and missionary English identity in Paulina's book
• 38 "We should be friendly to all, and worship none."
• 39 "the nightmare"; metaphorizing her depression (?) as falling overboard
  • 41 mourning dress - gradual revelation
• 42 second time she's mentioned "character study," first Paulina and now Mrs Marchmont
• 43 disease heralded by atmospheric change?
• 49 vision instigated by Aurora borealis
• 62 vision of Europe followed by school copybook disavowal
• 71 "fate and providence" leading her to Madame Beck's pensionnat
• 82-3 compare description of school and pedagogy to Lowood in Jane Eyre
• 96 serial character studies structure: Paulina, Marchmont, Beck, Ginevra
• 106 fate again with reconnecting to Dr John
• 107 "he laid himself open to my observation" -- narration as espionage, which is explicitly thematized or represented through Mdme Beck

Theme Tracking

Shakespeare allusions

• 78 "the head and front of her [Mrs Sweeny] offending" Othello