(no subject)
I read Charlotte Bronte's >Villette for the first time last week. I don't know why I didn't anticipate how wildly entertaining I would find it, given how much I love Jane Eyre, but in fact it was a delightful surprise which I did not anticipate at all.
Also, there ... are gayer nineteenth-century novels? But NOT MANY.
Villette is narrated by Lucy Snowe, a quiet and responsible young woman with hobbies that include staring creepily at the people around her, stuffing her own expectations into a tiny box labeled 'REALISTIC', and being an incredibly weird and unreliable narrator.
Due to an unspecified catastrophe, Lucy finds herself nearly penniless and short on options. In her one great risk-taking adventure of her life, she decides she's going to blow all her remaining cash on a trip across the Channel on the off-chance someone in France needs an English governess.
It turns out, someone in France does need an English teacher! Her name is Madame Beck and she runs a school...with CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE AND ESPIONAGE.
Lucy Snowe takes the fact that someone is constantly searching through her stuff and reading her letters pretty much in stride.
LUCY SNOWE: Had she creased one solitary article [while secretly searching my possessions], I own I should have felt much greater difficulty in forgiving her; but finding all straight and orderly, I said, 'Let bygones be bygones.'
Lucy does not exactly approve of the police-state school system, but nonetheless she spends paragraphs waxing rhapsodic about how great and capable Madame Beck is and how her powers are honestly wasted in a school system; she should have run a real police state! She would have been amazing at it!
LUCY SNOWE: Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired? ... I will not deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes...
Have I mentioned that Lucy drops a lot of comments that could be construed as incredibly gay? Lucy is very gay.
LUCY SNOWE: Each of the teachers in turn made me overtures of special intimacy; I tried them all...
Yes, Lucy does in fact date every female teacher in the school before discarding them one by one as boring, awful, etc. Sorry you're so picky, Lucy Snowe?!
The person in school that Lucy ACTUALLY spends the most time with is Ginevra Fanshawe, a sixteen-year-old student that Lucy accidentally sort-of befriended on the way to France, and who dropped Lucy the tip that led her to Madame Beck's.
Lucy thinks Ginevra is selfish, vain, mercenary, and incredibly hot. She goes on and on AND ON about how awful (and beautiful) she is. Out loud. All the time. To her face.
Ginevra Fanshawe, meanwhile, is just like 'let me tell you all about my devoted suitors and how boring they are and how I would much rather hang out here and be insulted by you, my very favorite cranky meanypants!'
GINEVRA FANSHAWE: "I am far more at my ease with you, old lady--you, you dear crosspatch--who take me at my lowest and know me to be coquettish, and ignorant, and flirting, and fickle, and silly, and selfish, and all the other sweet things you and I have agreed to be a part of my character."
LUCY SNOWE: I don't know why I chose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than to another; nor why, if two had to share the convenience of one drinking-vessel, as sometimes happened, I always contrived that she should be my convive, and rather liked to let her take the lion's share...
Don't you know, Lucy? DON'T YOU?
Lucy's like 'honestly I think you're a bit pathetic' and Ginevra's like 'you don't think so IN YOUR HEART' and Lucy's like 'in my heart you have not the OUTLINE of a place, I just turn you over in my BRAIN is all' and Ginevra's like 'really? REALLY? LET'S STAND IN FRONT OF A MIRROR AND TALK ABOUT HOW ATTRACTIVE I AM AND SEE IF I DON'T HAVE AN OUTLINE OF A PLACE IN YOUR HEART.' So, I mean. It's not ... a healthy relationship, and yet .....
LUCY SNOWE: Ginevra Fanshawe made no scruple of catching me as I was crossing the carre, whirling me round in a compulsory waltz, and heartily enjoying the mental and physical discomfiture her proceeding induced...
This is sexual harassment and Lucy Snowe doesn't have to take it, is what I'm saying, AND YET SHE DOES.
And then of course there's the school play -- but to introduce the school play we also must introduce the leading male characters, Dr. John and M. Paul.
Dr. John, Lucy wishes us to know, is a dreamboat. Lucy spends many, many paragraphs telling us how Dr. John is just objectively a dreamboat, it's not like she has a personal interest, this is a DISINTERESTED ASSESSMENT of Dr. John's features and character is all.
Dr. John is also a devoted suitor to Ginevra, who as established thinks devoted suitors are dull as ditchwater. Nonetheless, Dr. John spends many, many paragraphs telling Lucy how innocent and sweet and pure Ginevra is, while Lucy attempts not to laugh in his face.
M. Paul, meanwhile, is a tiny, cranky professor who appears to be the one male teacher at the school. His first big scene is when he decides that Lucy needs to have a role in the school play, so he grabs her away from a party and locks her in an attic, with rats, to learn her lines. He does not remember to bring her food or water.
(At this point, I'm like, well, NOW I know who Lucy is actually supposed to end up with, Brontes think a man is not even worth their time until they've locked somebody in an attic!)
SO. The school play, aka the best scene in the entire book. In this play, Lucy is supposed to be playing the foppish secondary love interest, to be rejected by the beautiful heroine (Ginevra, of course.)
The first thing that happens is one of the other teachers flips her shit because Lucy decides not to cross-dress. Lucy's attitude appears to be: why would you cross-dress when you could just MAKE IT GAYER?
OTHER TEACHER: How must it be, then? How accept a man's part, and go on the stage dressed as a woman?
LUCY SNOWE: I could not help turning upon her and saying that if she were not a lady and I a gentleman, I should feel disposed to call her out.
NOBODY TELLS LUCY SNOWE WHAT TO WEAR. (I'm not even going to talk about a hilarious bit later on when she freaks out over being given a pink dress for an event. Pink? PINK??? WHO EXPECTS LUCY SNOWE TO WEAR PINK. "I THOUGHT NO HUMAN FORCE SHOULD AVAIL TO PUT ME INTO IT.")
Anyway, Lucy and Ginevra get on stage together, with lovelorn Dr. John in the audience. Lucy pretty soon notices that despite the fact that Ginevra's supposed to fall in love with the other fellow on stage she is making a great point of demonstrating her attraction to Lucy; Lucy responds by ENTHUSIASTICALLY SEDUCING HER.
LUCY SNOWE: I knew not what possessed me either; but somehow, my longing was to eclipse the [romantic hero], i.e. Dr. John. Ginevra was tender; how could I be otherwise than chivalric?
GET IT, GIRL.
Tragically, it only happens the once; Lucy, unnerved by the capability for passion revealed in herself during this play, took a firm resolution, never to be drawn into a a similar affair.
Other notably gay moments in Lucy's life: that time that she's at a museum inspecting a mediocre naked Cleopatra painting while a DEEPLY SCANDALIZED M. Paul clutches his pearls --
M. PAUL: How dare you, a young person, sit coolly down, with the self-possession of a garcon, and look at that picture?
LUCY SNOWE: It is a very ugly picture, but I cannot at all see why I should not look at it.
-- that time she goes to the Opera and has an orgasmic reaction to the opera singer playing Vashti --
LUCY SNOWE: The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart out of its wonted orbit, the sunflower turned from the south to a fierce light, not solar -- a rushing, red, cometary light, hot on vision and to sensation.
-- that time she befriends Dr. John's other love interest, Paulina, who will not stop asking her to move in and be her companion!
PAULINA: Do you care for me, Lucy?
LUCY SNOWE: Yes, I do, Paulina.
PAULINA: And I love you.
In fact Paulina has this lovely idea that when she and Dr. John are married, Lucy is just going to move in with them and live with them forever in some sort of permanent arrangement.
However, by this point, Lucy has discovered the infinite joys of trolling Mr. Paul and is fully occupied with that. And I'm not going to lie, M. Paul is a weird pompous hyperbolic little dude -- let's not forget the scene where he cheerfully admits that he rented a room over the school just so he can spend his days spying on all the women in the garden; Lucy, to her credit, reacts with a justifiable WTF??? -- but there clearly is a certain joy to be found in trolling him. The scene where she accidentally-on-purpose breaks his glasses? PRICELESS.
"But," you may be asking, "all this is well and good, but what actually happens in Villette? Like, plot-wise?" Honestly .... not much. But sometimes things happen! For example, there's the time that Lucy, overcome with loneliness after six weeks alone, accidentally almost converts to Catholicism and then faints dramatically in the street! And the time that Madame Beck drugs Lucy to stop her from having a romantic meeting with M. Paul, and Lucy staggers out into the street and has a hallucinogenic episode in an Egyptian-themed carnival!
AND ALSO THERE'S THE GHOST NUN. Have I mentioned the ghost nun? There's a ghost nun. M. Paul and Lucy both see the ghost nun and M. Paul is like "this means we're destined to be together!"
Then Ginevra Fanshawe leaves a fake ghost nun in Lucy's bed, because Ginevra Fanshawe never met a plot element of this book she didn't want to make weirdly gay. I could go on, but I should probably stop. TALK TO ME ABOUT VILLETTE.
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/458801.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
Also, there ... are gayer nineteenth-century novels? But NOT MANY.
Villette is narrated by Lucy Snowe, a quiet and responsible young woman with hobbies that include staring creepily at the people around her, stuffing her own expectations into a tiny box labeled 'REALISTIC', and being an incredibly weird and unreliable narrator.
Due to an unspecified catastrophe, Lucy finds herself nearly penniless and short on options. In her one great risk-taking adventure of her life, she decides she's going to blow all her remaining cash on a trip across the Channel on the off-chance someone in France needs an English governess.
It turns out, someone in France does need an English teacher! Her name is Madame Beck and she runs a school...with CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE AND ESPIONAGE.
Lucy Snowe takes the fact that someone is constantly searching through her stuff and reading her letters pretty much in stride.
LUCY SNOWE: Had she creased one solitary article [while secretly searching my possessions], I own I should have felt much greater difficulty in forgiving her; but finding all straight and orderly, I said, 'Let bygones be bygones.'
Lucy does not exactly approve of the police-state school system, but nonetheless she spends paragraphs waxing rhapsodic about how great and capable Madame Beck is and how her powers are honestly wasted in a school system; she should have run a real police state! She would have been amazing at it!
LUCY SNOWE: Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired? ... I will not deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes...
Have I mentioned that Lucy drops a lot of comments that could be construed as incredibly gay? Lucy is very gay.
LUCY SNOWE: Each of the teachers in turn made me overtures of special intimacy; I tried them all...
Yes, Lucy does in fact date every female teacher in the school before discarding them one by one as boring, awful, etc. Sorry you're so picky, Lucy Snowe?!
The person in school that Lucy ACTUALLY spends the most time with is Ginevra Fanshawe, a sixteen-year-old student that Lucy accidentally sort-of befriended on the way to France, and who dropped Lucy the tip that led her to Madame Beck's.
Lucy thinks Ginevra is selfish, vain, mercenary, and incredibly hot. She goes on and on AND ON about how awful (and beautiful) she is. Out loud. All the time. To her face.
Ginevra Fanshawe, meanwhile, is just like 'let me tell you all about my devoted suitors and how boring they are and how I would much rather hang out here and be insulted by you, my very favorite cranky meanypants!'
GINEVRA FANSHAWE: "I am far more at my ease with you, old lady--you, you dear crosspatch--who take me at my lowest and know me to be coquettish, and ignorant, and flirting, and fickle, and silly, and selfish, and all the other sweet things you and I have agreed to be a part of my character."
LUCY SNOWE: I don't know why I chose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than to another; nor why, if two had to share the convenience of one drinking-vessel, as sometimes happened, I always contrived that she should be my convive, and rather liked to let her take the lion's share...
Don't you know, Lucy? DON'T YOU?
Lucy's like 'honestly I think you're a bit pathetic' and Ginevra's like 'you don't think so IN YOUR HEART' and Lucy's like 'in my heart you have not the OUTLINE of a place, I just turn you over in my BRAIN is all' and Ginevra's like 'really? REALLY? LET'S STAND IN FRONT OF A MIRROR AND TALK ABOUT HOW ATTRACTIVE I AM AND SEE IF I DON'T HAVE AN OUTLINE OF A PLACE IN YOUR HEART.' So, I mean. It's not ... a healthy relationship, and yet .....
LUCY SNOWE: Ginevra Fanshawe made no scruple of catching me as I was crossing the carre, whirling me round in a compulsory waltz, and heartily enjoying the mental and physical discomfiture her proceeding induced...
This is sexual harassment and Lucy Snowe doesn't have to take it, is what I'm saying, AND YET SHE DOES.
And then of course there's the school play -- but to introduce the school play we also must introduce the leading male characters, Dr. John and M. Paul.
Dr. John, Lucy wishes us to know, is a dreamboat. Lucy spends many, many paragraphs telling us how Dr. John is just objectively a dreamboat, it's not like she has a personal interest, this is a DISINTERESTED ASSESSMENT of Dr. John's features and character is all.
Dr. John is also a devoted suitor to Ginevra, who as established thinks devoted suitors are dull as ditchwater. Nonetheless, Dr. John spends many, many paragraphs telling Lucy how innocent and sweet and pure Ginevra is, while Lucy attempts not to laugh in his face.
M. Paul, meanwhile, is a tiny, cranky professor who appears to be the one male teacher at the school. His first big scene is when he decides that Lucy needs to have a role in the school play, so he grabs her away from a party and locks her in an attic, with rats, to learn her lines. He does not remember to bring her food or water.
(At this point, I'm like, well, NOW I know who Lucy is actually supposed to end up with, Brontes think a man is not even worth their time until they've locked somebody in an attic!)
SO. The school play, aka the best scene in the entire book. In this play, Lucy is supposed to be playing the foppish secondary love interest, to be rejected by the beautiful heroine (Ginevra, of course.)
The first thing that happens is one of the other teachers flips her shit because Lucy decides not to cross-dress. Lucy's attitude appears to be: why would you cross-dress when you could just MAKE IT GAYER?
OTHER TEACHER: How must it be, then? How accept a man's part, and go on the stage dressed as a woman?
LUCY SNOWE: I could not help turning upon her and saying that if she were not a lady and I a gentleman, I should feel disposed to call her out.
NOBODY TELLS LUCY SNOWE WHAT TO WEAR. (I'm not even going to talk about a hilarious bit later on when she freaks out over being given a pink dress for an event. Pink? PINK??? WHO EXPECTS LUCY SNOWE TO WEAR PINK. "I THOUGHT NO HUMAN FORCE SHOULD AVAIL TO PUT ME INTO IT.")
Anyway, Lucy and Ginevra get on stage together, with lovelorn Dr. John in the audience. Lucy pretty soon notices that despite the fact that Ginevra's supposed to fall in love with the other fellow on stage she is making a great point of demonstrating her attraction to Lucy; Lucy responds by ENTHUSIASTICALLY SEDUCING HER.
LUCY SNOWE: I knew not what possessed me either; but somehow, my longing was to eclipse the [romantic hero], i.e. Dr. John. Ginevra was tender; how could I be otherwise than chivalric?
GET IT, GIRL.
Tragically, it only happens the once; Lucy, unnerved by the capability for passion revealed in herself during this play, took a firm resolution, never to be drawn into a a similar affair.
Other notably gay moments in Lucy's life: that time that she's at a museum inspecting a mediocre naked Cleopatra painting while a DEEPLY SCANDALIZED M. Paul clutches his pearls --
M. PAUL: How dare you, a young person, sit coolly down, with the self-possession of a garcon, and look at that picture?
LUCY SNOWE: It is a very ugly picture, but I cannot at all see why I should not look at it.
-- that time she goes to the Opera and has an orgasmic reaction to the opera singer playing Vashti --
LUCY SNOWE: The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart out of its wonted orbit, the sunflower turned from the south to a fierce light, not solar -- a rushing, red, cometary light, hot on vision and to sensation.
-- that time she befriends Dr. John's other love interest, Paulina, who will not stop asking her to move in and be her companion!
PAULINA: Do you care for me, Lucy?
LUCY SNOWE: Yes, I do, Paulina.
PAULINA: And I love you.
In fact Paulina has this lovely idea that when she and Dr. John are married, Lucy is just going to move in with them and live with them forever in some sort of permanent arrangement.
However, by this point, Lucy has discovered the infinite joys of trolling Mr. Paul and is fully occupied with that. And I'm not going to lie, M. Paul is a weird pompous hyperbolic little dude -- let's not forget the scene where he cheerfully admits that he rented a room over the school just so he can spend his days spying on all the women in the garden; Lucy, to her credit, reacts with a justifiable WTF??? -- but there clearly is a certain joy to be found in trolling him. The scene where she accidentally-on-purpose breaks his glasses? PRICELESS.
"But," you may be asking, "all this is well and good, but what actually happens in Villette? Like, plot-wise?" Honestly .... not much. But sometimes things happen! For example, there's the time that Lucy, overcome with loneliness after six weeks alone, accidentally almost converts to Catholicism and then faints dramatically in the street! And the time that Madame Beck drugs Lucy to stop her from having a romantic meeting with M. Paul, and Lucy staggers out into the street and has a hallucinogenic episode in an Egyptian-themed carnival!
AND ALSO THERE'S THE GHOST NUN. Have I mentioned the ghost nun? There's a ghost nun. M. Paul and Lucy both see the ghost nun and M. Paul is like "this means we're destined to be together!"
Then Ginevra Fanshawe leaves a fake ghost nun in Lucy's bed, because Ginevra Fanshawe never met a plot element of this book she didn't want to make weirdly gay. I could go on, but I should probably stop. TALK TO ME ABOUT VILLETTE.
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/458801.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.