Anyway, I went for a walk on a golden afternoon, and read while I walked, and didn't bump into much or get hit by a car, and then I sat under a tree on the very pleasant grassy rosy median on Albermarle Rd because I was too lazy to walk up to the park. Which is too bad, because Lucy Snowe was given some kind of sedative that bizarrely made her hyper and crazy (like what happens to Laura when she has caffeine? or maybe to Paul? except in reverse?) and she goes to the park and there is a crazy festival where Everyone Is. This most certainly would have happened had I gone to the park, because there is always _some_ kind of crazy festival (maybe a bunch of rabbis walking around and chanting! maybe some guys drumming in Drummer's Grove! or drumming in a different grove) and also Everyone Is at the park, going running or whatever. You see your friends from every neighborhood in Brooklyn, because they just came in to whatever entrance is closest to where they live and then they did the circuit. Anyway, my experiences in almost every particular have nothing to do with Lucy Snowe's, so it is fine that instead of going to the park I went to a grassy median where perhaps one is not allowed to read a book. Okay, I can connect it to Villette by saying it is an allee interdite.
Some thoughts on finishing Villette a week ago:
- Gothic Stuff. So, again, I should read some criticism. But Wikipedia says the novel is notable for its use of Gothic doubling. I guess by this they mean the spooky nun (I will not elaborate in case you want to read Villette and be spooked by the nun.) I think Bronte isn't taking the Gothic stuff as seriously in Villette as she seems to in Jane Eyre, however. I mean, neither novel is Northanger Abbey; in Jane Eyre I guess you could make a case for the Gothic elements being kind of parodic or self-aware or something--like there aren't actually any supernatural elements, but oh wait there kind of are, never mind. And do Gothic novels require supernatural elements? Here is where I tell you I have not read any Anne Radcliffe or any of those ladies. I meant to read them in high school when I was writing a paper on Northanger Abbey and maybe I read like two paragraphs. Anyway, I feel like a lot of Gothic conventions are getting played with in Villette, although on the other hand Lucy seems to have this weird affinity with storms etc that is pretty spooky and serious. And there is the drugging stuff mentioned above. But it all seems to be explained away by cultural differences--the French are weirdly distrustful of their daughters, the Catholics are all superstitious--that make all the surveillance and mystery seem less . . . mysterious than the mystery in Jane Eyre seems to be. It's like, oh yeah, this is just how French people act. They spy on you and drug you and people are always having assignations. Oh, okay.
- Coincidences. So who came up with the rule that in every Victorian novel everyone has to know each other and turn out to be each other's nieces and uncles and wives and widows and doctors and so on? Like, once you're about a quarter of the way through the novel, you've met every character, and so when a new character shows up after that you're like, "okay, who is he going to secretly turn out to be?" They all do this! Is it some weird attempt at preserving unity of action, after the other unities are totally gone? Do all novels do this, but it's just that Victorian novels have like 600 guys in them? I guess The Great Gatsby does it. I guess Ulysses kind of does it, even. Mrs Dalloway only does it in a weird structural way: Septimus Smith is Mrs Dalloway's double and their paths cross a few times, right? But it's not like he turns out to be her uncle or something. Howard's End does it, kinda: only connect. Counterexamples?
- Lucy Snowe:Jane Eyre::?:? Is Jane Eyre as much of a weirdo as Lucy Snowe, I wonder. I think they both have this mixture of totally abject humility mixed with this intense independence and love of liberty and strong will and kind of unpleasant dry wit. I feel like Jane Eyre is more normal, but I haven't read Jane Eyre for ten years so I guess I'd better read it again. Staring at Magneto with his hands around Alice in Wonderland's throat was maybe not enough.
- PRETTY SPOILER-Y. Passion vs Friendship/Sisterhood. DO NOT READ THIS BULLET IF YOU WANT TO COME TO VILLETTE WITH FRESH EYES. In Jane Eyre Jane emphatically refuses to marry her weirdo missionary cousin St John because she only has sisterly feeling towards him, implicitly privileging the intense (doomed) (or is it) sexual passion she has for Rochester over the kind of companionate partnership St John offers. Or rather she thinks it's fine to have a companionate partnership but you don't call it marriage. In Villette the hot guy is nice and hot but kind of weirdly untrustworthy, and the book seems to be privileging this weird sisterly partnership with a funny-looking (but very fiery) professor, but it's also hard to tell how much the "sisterly" stuff is just more weird humility and how much it's Professor Bhaer-level totally-manufactured sexual desire for the sake of a conventional happy ending. END SPOILER EVEN THOUGH THE NEXT BULLET IS ABOUT THE ENDING IT IS PRETTY SAFE TO READ. WELL MAYBE NOT
- SPEAKING OF THE ENDING I am actually pretty glad that RBD spoiled the ending for me because I never would have understood it otherwise. More obfuscation! Intentional uncertainty! But also maybe reminding you that this is a work of fiction in a kind of Princess Bride-y way? If I'm remembering the ending of The Princess Bride right. Like if Lucy decides to lie to us, is that different from Charlotte lying to us? Yes, obviously, cry out loyal novel-readers everywhere. The Holmes stories after "The Final Problem" are not canon. That did not really happen, cry I when a million orcs shoot at the Fellowship and only hit Gandalf's hat. Implausible! Also, the fourth wall.
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