Charlotte Bronte's Villette is a novel that may frustrate the reader. Just as one begins to understand it, the novel changes and sifts like sand through grasping fingers. Characters, setting, form, and focus all seem to be mercurial, as the novel sways between opposing forces. As even the central character and narrator Lucy Snowe, is herself changeable, the readers themselves must give the final evaluation of Villette. Thus, Bronte does not force an opinion on the reader. Rather, through her writing, she leads her audience through a steady progression of thought processes toward their own conclusion. .
The reader finds the first contradiction in the very name, Lucy Snowe, for, while the first name suggests light, the last suggests cold. These oppositional tendencies play themselves out in the central character as the narrative progresses. Just as our narrator tells us of herself, she contradicts her assertions by acting otherwise. For, she stresses her cold, contemplative nature from the first: "I, Lucy Snowe, was calm." (22) She avows that she "had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains." (38) However, fate does not allow this as eight years of calm, staid living are drastically disrupted by a metaphorical, stormy change. (38) Upon this upheaval, Lucy takes the initiative to set sail for France on a ship aptly called "The Vivid," for it is in this movement that Lucy is the most full of life. (51) On the other hand, shortly after having settled again into a placid life at Villette, Lucy informs the reader that she is "inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition." (76) How is one expected to believe this statement after having seen Lucy engage life in a manner so otherwise? The confusion continues, as Lucy professes "About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future - such a future as mine - to be dead.
