Lucy Snowe leaves her home in England to teach at a girls' boarding school on the Continent. Villette! Villette! Have you read it? exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Bronte's final novel appeared in 1853. It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power. Arguably Bronte's most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on 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 file 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 freindship with a wordly 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. Villette is an amazing book, observed novelist Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Written before psychoanalysis came into being, Villette is nevertheless a psychoanalytic work--a psychosexual study of its heroine, Lucy Snowe. Written before the philosophy of existentialism was formulated, the novel's view of the world can only be described as existential. . . . Today it is read and discussed more intensely than Charlotte Bronte's other novels, and many critics now beleive it to be a true master-piece, a work of genius that more than fulfilled the promise of Jane Eyre. Indeed, Virginia Woolf judged Villette to be Bronte's finest novel. Biographical Note v Introduction xiii A. S. Byatt Ignes Sodre Discuss Villette Volume One Bretton 3(8) Paulina 11(8) The Playmates 19(18) Miss Marchmont 37(9) Turning a New Leaf 46(6) London 52(13) Villette 65(11) Madame Beck 76(16) Isidore 92(13) Dr. John 105(8) The Portresse's Cabinet 113(7) The Casket 120(12) A Sneeze Out of Season 132(12) The Fete 144(31) The Long Vacation 175(16) Volume Two Auld Lang Syne 191(16) La Terrasse 207(11) We Quarrel 218(8) The Cleopatra 226(14) The Concert 240(23) Reaction 263(19) The Letter 282(11) Vashti 293(15) M. De Bassompierre 308(15) The Little Countess 323(15) A Burial 338(17) The Hotel Crecy 355(20) Volume Three The Watchguard 375(14) Monsieur's Fete 389(15) M. Paul 404(12) The Dryad 416(12) The First Letter 428(10) M. Paul Keeps His Promise 438(10) Malevola 448(13) Fraternity 461(14) The Apple of Discord 475(16) Sunshine 491(17) Cloud 508(26) Old and New Acquaintance 534(12) The Happy Pair 546(8) Faubourg Clotilde 554(16) Finis 570(5) Notes 575(14) Reading Group Guide 589