#3: Villette

A female friend once told me that girls either love or Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. They cannot love "both Brontës". (Which makes me feel a little bit sorry for poor Anne, who's always the forgotten one; but sadly, having never read her, I cannot comment on the quality of her books.) I'm not sure if the Brontë rule applies to males. I suppose it's rare enough for a guy to read any Brontë that no-one's ever taken the time to make a rule for us.

I'm not sure what the rule would look like if someone did create it. I've read both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. I liked Wuthering Heights and really liked Jane Eyre. But I loved Villette, and it's to that less commonly read masterpiece that my heart truly belongs.

Although I'm not trying to order the books in this list, I suspect Villette would be in my Top 5 books, perhaps higher. It's certainly one of the first books I think of when I list my favourites. I first read it in my fourth year at University, my Honours year, in a subject on Victorian fiction. I was skeptical. I had only read Wuthering Heights at the time, and, having liked it, doubted I could be all that fond of Charlotte. How wrong I was. Where Emily is gothic, melodramatic and largely implausible, Charlotte captures humanity almost perfectly - and her characterisations are definitely at their most refined here. Lucy Snowe, the heroine, is the sort that you fall absolutely in love with. She is enigmatic, and quite emotionally complicated, but what Brontë (Emily, Charlotte or probably even Anne) heroine isn't complicated? They were complicated girls. Lucy is lonely, and yet chooses loneliness because it brings with it a kind of independence. And yet she longs to love, and be loved, and we long for her to be loved, and we love her. And yet... she longs to determine her own life, and we feel her pain. And yet... she hates drawing attention to herself, but seems constantly like something within her is just bursting towards the surface.

This isn't a clear-cut book, and I suspect it isn't for everyone. But I felt for Lucy at every moment of the book; felt all her happiness, and her loneliness, and her hope, and her sorrow. Lucy is an ambiguous heroine, but an unforgettable one all the same. And the ending - I wish I could talk more about the ending. Let it suffice to say that, at a time when books usually only finished with marriage or death, Brontë chose a path never taken before, and the book is all the more wonderful and exquisite for it.

I love this book. Evidently.