Villette
By: Charlotte Brontë
Edition: 1997 Modern Library ed
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 575
Subjects: Man-woman relationships -- Belgium -- Fiction; Women teachers -- Belgium -- Fiction; Belgium -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Description: Arguably Bronte's most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on her experiences as a student in Brussels as well as her profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. Lucy Snowe, the narrator of Villette, flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the great cosmopolitan capital of Villette.

Soon Lucy's struggle for independence is overshadowed by both her friendship with a worldly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic schoolmaster. Bronte's strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free.