Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the character of Lucy Snowe. Do you find her to be an admirable heroine? What qualities do you like in her, or dislike? How do you think you would behave in her circumstances?
2. Writing to her publisher, Charlotte Bronte had this to say about Vilette's protagonist: "I consider that [Lucy Snowe] is both morbid and weak at times; her character sets up no pretensions to unmixed strength, and anybody living her life would necessarily become morbid." What do you think of this appraisal? Do her 'unheroic' qualities make her more sympathetic or less?
3. Virginia Woolf felt that Villette was Bronte's "finest novel," and speaking about Bronte, wrote that "All her force, and it is the more tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, 'I love, I hate, I suffer.'" What do you think Woolf means? Do you find this observation interesting, appealing, or moving?
4. Why do you think Bronte sets the narrative of Villette in a foreign country?
5. Explore the theme of education in Villette: What is the role of education in Lucy Snowe's own life?
6. The conclusion of Villette is famously ambiguous (it was made purposefully so by Bronte). Do you find it a happy ending? A sad one? Discuss.
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Additional questions by LitLovers.
7. In what way does Lucy Snowe live up to her name? Why is she so withholding of her emotions? What is she afraid of? Can you pin point the first moment she reveals tenderness?
8. Lucy has a revealing conversation with little Polly, the night Polly learns she is returning to her father. When Polly asks Lucy if she likes Graham, Lucy twice tells her "a little." Then Lucy goes on, "Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults." .... "All boys are." Care to comment on that exchange? What does Lucy's attitude toward men reveal about her, and how does it serve her when she goes to Villette? At the end of the chapter, when Polly crawls into Lucy's bed for warmth, what is Lucy's response to her? What does Lucy ponder?
9. In fact, what are we to make of the entire episode about Polly? Why is it in the novel at all? Is Polly to serve as a parallel or a contrast to Lucy?
10. Why isn't Lucy's past spelled out more precisely? Can you speculate about what happened to her family? Any theories as to how she came be to alone and isolated in the world?
11. Were you disappointed that the romance between Dr. John and Lucy failed? Would he have made an appropriate mate for Lucy; in fact, is he good enough for Lucy? And why does she never reveal to him how they are connected?
12. How does M. Paul compare to Dr. John? In what way is Lucy and M. Paul's love "far better than common?"
13. From this novel, what can you ascertain about the lives of single women in the mid-19th century? What kind of security was available to them? What kinds of work? How was a woman to live if she was without family or husband?
14. Discuss the religious differences—between catholicism and protestantism—as expressed in Villette. Are those differences in evidence today?
(Questions 1-6 by Knopf Doubleday; 7-15 by LitLovers. Please feel free to use both sets, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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