Previously in this series: How To Tell If You Are In A Noel Streatfield Novel.
1. You have one dream, and it is very small, and everyone around you wants to crush it.
2. Your grandest ambition is to open a small school with four chairs and three well-behaved students, and to someday own a vase with a flower in it, and perhaps to have a second dress.
3. You take that part about the second dress back; you dare not fly so close to the sun, lest Icarus-like, your wings are singed.
4. You have just been walking in the rain, and everyone who raised you is dead, and you are glad.
5. A beautiful and shallow woman that you hate is your best friend for reasons you cannot explain. The more she demands your respect and esteem, the more cruelly you withhold it, which drives her wild. She mocks your station in public; you criticize her morals in private. You suspect her of being Catholic. One night you share a bed and have a fever dream together. She marries a terrible man and sends you fat letters stuffed with passion and longing.
6. Someone compares you to a sparrow. Someone compares your best friend to a scarlet-breasted robin. Someone compares the man you secretly love to a hawk or a crow.
7. None of your pupils are interested in Latin. Your pupils are scatterbrained monsters.
8. You have an enemy who claims to love you. You are competent at embroidering, but not accomplished.
9. You draw horrifying shipwrecks and lightning-ruined oak trees in your spare time. You have never danced, not even once, not even in your dreams.
10. You never tell anyone anything.
11. Someone you have never met has died and left you 20 pounds; you are the richest woman in the world and no man is your master now. You quit your soul-crushing job and move into a cottage. The cottage has whitewashed walls and a small chair for you to sit in; you have never dreamed of so much happiness.
12. You went to France once. You didn’t think much of it.
13. Something has been forbidden to you.
14. You know a man with easily excitable features and very dark whiskers. The two of you argue frequently over points of theology and may very well be in love. He handed you a flower once, and you have never forgotten it.
15. You have a terrible violence in your heart.
Tags: anne bronte, aw branwell, books, charlotte bronte, emily bronte, how to tell what novel you’re in
Mallory, this is gorgeous. Poetic and satirical at the same time. Perfection!
I love you so much.
No, *I* love her so much! She is mine, she is mine, you cannot have her! Beware, there is a terrible violence in my heart!
As a big Bronte fan, This is fantastic!
The dress I’m wearing is much too loud to read this. Feeling slightly ashamed now. Also, this is amazeballs.
is it red or is it pink
It is orange, which is a slightly-less-whorey color. But it has flowers on it. More than one.
That is *exactly* what I pictured!
I am wearing red tights and a dress that hits above the knee, I feel the dissonance as well.
This makes me want to read Villette again right now.
Me too. But I dare not, lest I fall into the sea.
You know, a friend gave me this book a couple years back and I still haven’t read it. I am terrible about hoarding classics for some vague future use. What’s your favorite thing about Villette? (I need some motivation here, I think)
I have read the first half of Villette twice and the second half zero times… I didn’t dislike it, I just kept getting distracted and forgetting the first half before I got around to finishing it, which I don’t think has ever happened to me with any other novel.
The best part about Villette is weird Catholic fever dream that comes in the middle. Turns out moving to a foreign country, with no friends except your evil coworkers or hideous childhood playmates, living in a garret haunted by flying nuns, working constantly, eating never, and wandering around during Papist decadence is a total trip. (Also, it’s a beautiful, chthonic fable about a woman learning to love herself and others and how cynical depressed people can build a life for themselves once they start to see “human” as a positive adjective.)
It is the most depressing book I have ever read.
the ending when the heroine is like fuck you patriarchy.
actually the entire book is like fuck you patriarchy.
Joanna Russ in her book How to Suppress Women’s Writing describes Villette as a “mediation on a jailbreak.” It’s a woman slowly trying to escape the clutches of patriarchy even as they close upon her. It has an ambiguous ending. It’s an incredibly subversive book in a quiet and sneaky way.
Villette is amazing and wonderful and the character of Lucy Snowe helped solidify one of the best friendships of my life.
Aside from that, flying nuns. And crossdressing. And buried letters. Buried things, in general.
It’s just so good.
You endeavour to be happy when solitary; some of your keenest pleasures have come from solitary pursuits. Yet you long for the company of a sympathetic soul, a true soulmate. You will ignore social convention for this soulmate, but not your own inbuilt ethical and moral compass or your sense of self-respect.
You are capable of seducing men much older and wealthier by back-chatting them.
OK, that’s pretty much just Jane Eyre.
Agnes Grey, for the first bit. Though she seduces a man by her sitting quietly skills.
The Brontes gave me an erroneous idea of how many people would be attracted by my habit of ignoring them to read a book and occasionally interjecting with a forthright remark.
You know, I think they gave me an accurate impression of the same thing: that there would be one person who would like that, and that I should marry him.
Brontes: gave me excellent relationship advice. <- Unlikely statement.
Ditto. Weird, right?
I mean, there only has to be one sympathetic soul for my waywardness to attract, and Reader, I married him.
It did work for me, though! But I may be the only one. His wife in the attic was a bit problematic, but that hurdle was soon overcome
Fortunately there was no wife in the attic for mine. We can’t even afford an attic.
Did she burn down the house, or did they just get a quickie divorce?
This is wonderful and makes me think I need to re-read Villette (it has been all of eighteen months). But I just have to point out that the Brontës went to Belgium, not France (and that is what Labassecoeur is based on in Villette). I am raising this quibble as a person who read Villette and then promptly moved to Belgium.
*waves hand vaguely in the direction of Europe* it’s all the same thing
France, Belgium—full of Jesuits, the both of ’em!
True enough!
and chocolate. Never forget the chocolate.
Belgium is only sort of a country.
Works great for the “take any sincere statement about a country, swap in Belgium and try to say it with a straight face” gag, which is a favorite of mine.
God, my pupils *are* scatterbrained monsters…
All of them. Monsters.
I never doubted for a second that I was in a Bronte novel,but if I had ever wondered, I would have come to the Toast first with my terrible secret.
Where’s the “aw branwell” part? Or is that #13?
I just feel bad for him in general.
It’s all right, he’s got the Mr. Mybugs of the world on his side.
I frequently feel bad for branwell. it seems like it was pretty tough to be him.
(also did you know Daphne du Maurier wrote a biography on him?)
such is the violence of your sadistic sexual appetites that though you would never raise a fist to your lover’s face or brutalize his virile body with anything but thought and word and those mostly in imagination, the concealed fury of your will will bend the very forces of nature to be your handmaidens and allies and bring him low, bloodied, battered, blinded and begging to his proper place at your feet, on his knees
(sorry that is just jane eyre again, I know there are other books in the world. or so I hear.)
( I just love that in Jane Eyre it is the man that must be humbled and hurt in order to be worthy of the poor, plain little governess, love it love it love it)
also: you will go onstage en travestie to a point but you WILL NOT WEAR PANTS in much the same way that you ARE NOT A PAPIST. You will be a man from the waist up but all woman from the waist down and if that is not realistic enough for the audience they can suck it. you will play a man in skirts and you will make them like it.
No there isn’t! Everything must always come back to Jane Eyre. It’s the core in which our world revolves around. But Villette is terrific as well 🙂
“12. You went to France once. You didn’t think much of it.”
This is funny to me because my first trip to France, much of the time was spent alienating myself in my temporary room, reading Jane Eyre for the first time.
Oh, that’s really all there is to do there.
We did find some kind of cool footpath through a forest though and I took some walks through cemetaries.
/Wow I sound like a 7th grader that wears Tripp pants
Also another fun activity in France is a deep realization of, after visiting Camus’ country of origin, how The Stranger finally made sense.
Contextualizing pieces of art is one of my favorite things about traveling. When I went to Italy for the first time, I saw the countryside and the beautiful quality of light and understood why my favorite Italian Renaissance paintings look the way they do.
Camus didn’t grow up in France but rather Algeria. (sorry to be that person.)
Aw dude. Well, he lived in France for a while and died in France so at least we know it influenced him somehow! Guess ‘country of origin’ isn’t the correct phrase.
“A beautiful and shallow woman that you hate is your best friend for reasons you cannot explain. The more she demands your respect and esteem, the more cruelly you withhold it, which drives her wild. She mocks your station in public; you criticize her morals in private. You suspect her of being Catholic. One night you share a bed and have a fever dream together. She marries a terrible man and sends you fat letters stuffed with passion and longing.”
I want to carve this into something. Maybe the cover of my dissertation. In a Rosalie vs. Ginevra cagematch, the real winner is me. (Ginevra, though.)
This is just the best. This should get picked up as a preface.
Also, there is a dead nun living in your brain.
Villette whispers to me constantly so I was delighted to see this.
I like to think of Villette as a sort of 19th Century LOST IN TRANSLATION, only instead of Japan it’s in Belgium, and instead of Bill Murray it’s a ghost nun.
I just finished Wuthering Heights for the first time with steam coming out of my ears. I HATE EVERYONE IN THAT BOOK. (Except Nelly Dean. <3 u Ellen)
Right? Wuthering Heights is officially my Favorite Book in Which I Despise All the Characters.
I love Wuthering Heights so much. That book is all, “Oh, you wanted to romanticize rural life? LET ME TELL YOU A TALE OF PSYCHOPATHIC NECROPHILIACS.”
…I’m suddenly wondering if I ought to pick up this book, now.
Yes, you should. It is the best rage-read ever.
“You want a love story? YOU WANT A LOVE STORY. HERE’S YOUR DAMN LOVE STORY, FULL OF HEATHER-THORNS AND BOG MUD, AND I SHALL SHOVE IT RIGHT UP YOUR ASS!” – Emily Bronte’s ghost, into the ear of every reader when first they pick up her book.
Emily Bronte is clearly better than Charlotte.
Absolutely. I mean, Charlotte’s one of the greatest writers in the history of English literature, but Emily. Man, Emily. Leagues ahead.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
you wanna go
Just my own IMHO. Charlotte never makes me feel like throwing a book across the room. In my world, this is a plus.
Really? REALLY? Charlotte is a genius, Emily is insane.
I don’t see why we have to pit them against each other.
Love Charlotte for her prose. Adore Emily for her poetry. Admire Anne for her social conscience.
You are not perturbed to discover that the man you love is actually a close relative of yours, but rather that he is Belgian.
I stopped reading this book when i was teen bc it was so dark and Goth I hated EVERYONE and now I am learning that for some people those qualities are its unique charm! Its like my 1st yr of college when I first discovered some people actually LIKED President Reagan.
TOAST PEOPLE: you should probably go watch The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, which is a modernized web series based on Jane Eyre and set in Vancouver and just generally everything is wonderful.
I have just been reading Charlotte’s letters from her Brussels period – Villette (my favourite novel) jumps off her pages.
Your one dress is black. You sometimes imagined the second dress could be charcoal, maybe even a light grey , but fortunately you came to your senses and realised how slutty that would have been.
PINK DRESS PINK DRESS
That reminds me! Has anyone been watching “The Autobiography of Jane Eyre” on Youtube? It’s such an interesting blend of eye-rollingly low-rent and unexpectedly authentic/beautiful.
GENIUS.
Once, during the deadness of the summer when everyone else has fled the heat, and you have been walking alone, day after day, through the dusty streets, you are compelled, for reasons you can’t even express to yourself but which are dark and huge and painful, to enter a Catholic church and pretend to confess. You later figure this as a kind of lighthearted impulse, but it seared your soul, to be so lonely.
A) You marry a formerly Raging Asshole, but it’s all right because he’s meek and reformed and really really loves you.
B) You don’t marry the Raging Asshole, you marry the Nice Guy Next Door, but all your chemistry is with the Raging Asshole and everyone’s convinced you’re soulmates. Maybe he loves you, maybe he hates you. Hard to tell.
C) You marry the Raging Asshole and it turns out to be a horrible mistake, because, guess what? He’s a Raging Asshole! You thought he loved you, but he hates your guts.
Everyone in your life has at least three different names, perfect for cases of mistaken identities. Alternatively, everyone in your life shares one of three names, so no one can keep any of you straight.
This was great. I struggled my way through Villette and I’ve got to say, I’m never going back there again. I love Dickens and Trollope but whew, was I glad to close that one.
Genius!!! This is hilarious. But I won’t laugh … not allowed in a Bronte novel.
Your entire family is dead and you relish in the knowledge that you are smarter than everyone else, including all men and especially those who educated you.
You are not perturbed to discover that the man you love is actually a close relative of yours, but rather that he is Belgian.
I am crying laughing. Thank you so much! this is hilarious.
“Your grandest ambition is to open a small school with four chairs and three well-behaved students, and to someday own a vase with a flower in it, and perhaps to have a second dress.”
Ah yes. That’s the dream.
“The man you’re in love with is almost certainly going to marry someone else.”
"The man you're in love with is almost certainly going to marry someone else."
You mourn the passing of your dead love, who you hated, who was married to someone else, by repeatedly headbutting a tree. This is not considered out of the ordinary behaviour for you.