Villette
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Villette
Buy Now for £19.73
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Narrated by:
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Wanda McCaddon
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By:
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Charlotte Brontë
Arguably Charlotte Brontë's most deeply felt work, Villette draws on her own profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings.
Left to fend for herself after a family tragedy, Lucy Snowe flees from her unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the cosmopolitan capital of Villette. There, Lucy struggles to prove herself in her new circumstances and to manage both her unruly students and her inner grief. But her quest for independence and stability is soon challenged by her complex feelings for a worldly English doctor and then an autocratic professor. Brontë's strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free.
Plain, poor, and lacking charm as well as any trace of self-esteem, Lucy is an unusual but utterly memorable heroine. As this thoughtful novel delves into her psyche, listeners will come to know and love her as a friend.
(P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Critic reviews
“[Villette is] Brontë’s finest novel.”
(Virginia Woolf)“Villette! Villette! Have you read it? It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power.”
(George Eliot)“Villette is an amazing book. 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 Brontë’s other novels, and many critics now believe it to be a true master-piece, a work of genius that more than fulfilled the promise of Jane Eyre.”
“[McCaddon] convincingly portrays the many moods and complex character of Charlotte Brontë’s heroine…Her many voices, with subtle timing, sweep us at a quick clip through a narrative of psychological insight and vividly rendered places, people and landscapes.”
(AudioFile)Nadia May (this audiobook's performer) is a pseudonym for Wanda McCaddon. Performer was excellent. Looked her up as this was the first audiobook I've listened to from her. Her voice reminded me of Harriet Walter, and she has performed over 500 audioworks apparently. Sadly she died in Dec 2023 aged 91, having lived several lives, including having written her PhD thesis on EM Forster and been a professor. Despite the exquisite accents and drama afforded in this performance, I found the narrator's perfect RP accent distracting. I had in mind a young, middle class Victorian Yorkshire accent for the heroine, Lucy Snowe, as I imagine the author's own accent might have been. That is perhaps my bias and unfair on the performer.
Not as enjoyable as Jane Eyre, Shirley, Wuthering Heights, Tenant of Wildfell Hall or even Agnes Grey, for me. I wouldn't recommend this particular story for the general reader but glad to have been introduced to the performer.
Reader - did she marry him?
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Quel heartache !
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