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Villette

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Villette

By: Charlotte Brontë
Narrated by: Karen Cass
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About this listen

 With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls's boarding school in the small town of Villette. There, she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, a headmistress who spies on her staff, and her own complex feelings: first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Villette, Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel, is a powerfully moving look at isolation and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.(P)2005 Isis Publishing Ltd. Classics Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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I think the characterisation of the quaint little girl is delightful. About half way in I started to get submerged in all the endless stuff about ‘Dr John’ etc etc and found it more and more tedious. Disappointed in its increasingly plodding pace.

Really strong start -

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the narrator here, Karen Cass, is excellent; all voices are distinctive and appropriate, with the French spoken fluently. Karen really brings this long and quite wordy story to life.

About the story - Charlotte Bronte is a brilliant, brilliant writer, involving you entirely in the thoughts of her characters, sketching people with a few sentences, providing complicated descriptions of places and events that make you feel as if you are there too.
Her style is of its time; however the rather archaic language fits the story, and the close attention to detail is amazing. In addition the story gives itself acres of time so that you do see how Lucy's life is lived, her isolation, her friendships, her dependence on the smallest kindnesses.

Lucy...she never complains or casts herself as any sort of victim; she is strong and resolute, and knows her own mind. Witness her robust and reasoned rejection of catholicism. She takes people as they are and seems not to judge them; she is witty ( the way she describes Ginevra) and generous. Her way of going on is to remain shadowy and self sufficient. You can only admire her, whilst wishing she would stand up and kick someone sometime.

To have access to the reflections of Charlotte Bronte on life, the universe and everything, as we do here, is I believe a privilege.
it strikes me that women's lives then were like a permanent lockdown, lived in long frocks, corsets, unwieldy hats, and inadequate clothing of various sorts. You can only admire Lucy's triumph here.

The ending, Charlotte tells us, is ' a mystery' however I am coming down firmly on the side of happiness for Lucy.Anything else would really be unbearable in its unfairness.

Great, great book, beautifully read; thank you Audible!!!

Charlotte Bronte I love you

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Didn't get on at all with the narrator, kept doing silly childlike voices for apolly, hated it and found a new narrator.

Awful

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