So M. Paul announces he’s leaving, and Lucy mopes around because he’s been really nice to her lately, but when everyone’s saying goodbye to him, she just lets Mme. Beck shove her to one side so M. Paul doesn’t even see she’s there. Lucy I guess does not know that a person can use her words to make her presence known to someone whose line of vision she’s not currently standing in. There’s two chapters of Lucy wishing she could say goodbye to M. Paul, but not actually taking any steps to give herself a chance to say goodbye to M. Paul, and then off he sails for Australia or something, because he’s gotta something. The details surrounding his departure are fuzzy in my mind because:

Mme. Beck tries to drug Lucy, but it doesn’t work and Lucy heads to the park, where everyone in all Villette has assembled for a party that Lucy wasn’t invited to. Wonder why.

Also at the party: M. Paul! Not sailed yet after all! Shocking! Lucy sees him, but again, apparently unaware that you can say “Hi! It’s me, Lucy!”, she just keeps quiet and stares at him.

When Lucy gets back from the parade, having absolutely refused to say anything to M. Paul, I swear to God this girl doesn’t have a firm grasp on the function of speech, she finds GHOST NUN sleeping in her bed. I got so excited for a second before I remembered that Charlotte Bronte hates me and would never have an awesome climactic ghost nun scene for me.

It’s just the costume. No ghost nun showdown.

Apparently, Ginevra’s boyfriend — now husband; they eloped! — was the one dressing up as the ghost nun in order to sneak into the school and see Ginevra. That is such a surprising and hilarious plan that I think he’s going to make an awesome husband for Ginevra. I want them to adopt Lucy, and she can live with them and say bitchy stuff to them every time they try to be nice, and they can giggly merrily and call her adorable nicknames from antiquity.

But, that’s not what happens. Instead M. Paul tells Lucy he loves her, and blah blah blah they’re going to get married after he gets back from his three-year voyage and you know what fucking happens?

His ship sinks.

HIS SHIP SINKS.

Charlotte Bronte, I cannot with you. Don’t try and throw me a bullshit bone being all “oh happy minds can imagine a joyous future for us, I’m not going to say any more.” YOU HAVE JUST MADE IT OBVIOUS THAT HIS SHIP SINKS.

Despite my frustration with this ridiculous fucking book, I am delighted Alice hosted the readalong. Thanks, Alice! Reading along was super fun, all the bloggers are great, and the only tiny thing that could have improved is Charlotte Bronte not being such a FUN-KILLING ZERO-FUCKS-GIVING LUNATIC.

I will just leave you with the following exchange:

“Spartan girl! Proud Lucy!” she would say, smiling at me. “Graham says you are the most peculiar, capricious little woman he knows; but yet you are excellent; we both think so.”

“You both think you know not what,” said I. “Have the goodness to make me as little the subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as possible. I have my sort of life apart from yours. . . . Yes, [solitude] is sadness. Life, however; has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy, lies heart-break.”

“Lucy, I wonder if anybody will ever comprehend you altogether.”

Villette was published 160 years ago, and no luck so far.

The post The Villette Readalong Staggers to Its Inevitably Irritating Conclusion appeared first on Reading the End.

“Not that much time,” however, does not equal “no time.” Lucy goes out to do some errands for M. Beck but not like, the kind of errands a servant would do. No indeed. Ladylike errands. She has a basket of fresh fruit to deliver, but because Lucy cannot be bothered about other people’s lives, she spends hours wandering around and doing errands before she goes deliver the fruit. Like I dunno, Lucy, maybe deliver fruit first, do errands after? So the fresh fruit stays fresh?

So Lucy gets stranded way out at this old lady’s house. While she’s chilling there, she meets the same priest who helped her out before, but she doesn’t recognize him. Lucy. Seriously? You recognized Dr. John after how many years? But you can’t be bothered remembering the face of the guy who was super nice to you in your time of need?

Anyway. Pere Silas tells her the story of a beautiful and virginal girl called Justine Marie who was forbidden to be with her lover, so she went straight into a convent and died of sadness. Her family thereafter fell upon hard times, and when her father died, and her mother and grandmother were left penniless, Justine Marie’s former lover swooped in and helped them out.

And that lover.

Was.

M. Paul!

Lucy is touched by this — I mean, as you would be. That’s actually really nice. She decides she’s not threatened by Justine Marie because she figures Justine Marie was probably insipid and terrible. I figure Justine Marie is the ghost nun and that there will be an insane supernatural showdown in the last few chapters. Except, like, that would be an outcome I would enjoy, and Charlotte Bronte has been pretty resistant to those so far in this book.

But here’s something Charlotte Bronte can never take away from me:

[M. Paul’s dog] was very tiny, and had the prettiest little innocent face, the silkiest long ears, the finest dark eyes in the world. I never saw her, but I thought of Paulina de Bassompierre: forgive the association, reader, it would occur.

Bahahahahahahah. Lucy, you’re a garbage friend.

Tune in next time for the disappointing conclusion to Lucy’s romance with M. Paul and probably NO GHOST NUN SHOWDOWNS AT ALL, even though that would be amazing.

The post The Villette Readalong Insults Paulina appeared first on Reading the End.

It’s lucky I do like Ginevra Fanshawe, because everybody else in this book is horrible. Let’s do a rundown.

Dr. John, having spent ignored Lucy completely since Paulina come to town, sits next to her at a party and speaks to her for the first time in three months, and you know what he says? He tells her that she’s as “inoffensive as a shadow.”

You know who else is bullshit, though? Goddamn Lucy! She keeps promising things I want, and then not delivering them. First she made me believe that she was going to do a scheme to make Ginevra look bad, and then there was no scheme, there were no contrivances. Absolutely nothing happened at that damn party. And then, and then, at the party when Dr. John’s trying to Miles-Standish his way into Paulina’s heart, and Lucy’s about to give him a piece of his mind as regards his flightiness as a friend and what he can do with his bullshit flirting-by-proxy requests (truth-bombs Lucy is, as I say, my favorite Lucy), she instead doesn’t fuss at him and fusses at Ginevra Fanshawe instead.

I am quite sure she went to bed that night all the better and more settled in mind and mood, and slept all the more sweetly for having undergone a sound moral drubbing.

Okay, Lucy. If you’re sure. Also: REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU PROMISED US A SCHEME AND THEN DIDN’T DO THE SCHEME?

However, nobody does as much shitty stuff in this section as M. Paul. It was him going through Lucy’s stuff last time, and he keeps on doing it, and Lucy’s fine with it apparently because he leaves her books to read? Or something? Another way he might give her books if he wanted her to have new books would be to just give her the books, but okay. He also hisses rude things in her ear when she’s trying to talk to other people. He talks smack about England until Lucy yells at him. After that he badgers her to try and get her to admit that she speaks Greek and Latin (she does not).

Which — these appear to be courtship strategies? And although the correct response would be along these lines:

Lucy’s more like this:

even though her version of waving cutely is dicking M. Paul around by refusing to give him a present on the day everyone is giving him presents, even though she has a gift for him and he’s clearly hurt that she didn’t get him anything. Way to go, Lucy. You would do awesome as a seventh-grader.

Oh, and that’s not even to mention the fact that M. Paul apparently has a secret office that overlooks the garden, and he pretends the office is for studying but actually it’s for spying on all the students.

M. Paul has failed to live up to his early promise. He is the worst, and Lucy Snowe is the worst, and Dr. John and Paulina are the worst (oh, yeah, the other thing that happens is that Dr. John tells Paulina he loves her, snoooooore), and I’ve decided that this book needs to just be about Ginevra instead.

Head over to Alice’s place to see if I am the only member of the readalong who wants to punch everyone in this book.

The post The Villette Readalong, in which everyone is bullshit appeared first on Reading the End.

“But I have talked to Graham and you did not chide,” I pleaded.

“No,” said she, “I needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury stamp your language.”

Hey, Lucy, I’m on your side right now, but: People might like you more if you talked to yourself less.

Anyway, the people who do like Lucy thus far are Ginevra Fanshawe and, despite his completely insane-person behavior, M. Paul. Ginevra trades her coffee for Lucy’s rolls every morning at breakfast (that’s adorable), and M. Paul minds about it when Lucy sits crying, and gets upset when he thinks she has a boyfriend. But Ginevra is a flirty shallow jerk, and M. Paul beats up stoves when he’s in a bad mood and sneaks into Lucy’s room and reads her letters to see if she and Dr. John have a Thing.

I’m pretty close to done with M. Paul. My early positive impression of him has not been borne out by subsequent events. He’s going to have to be really really awesome throughout the next few sections to make up for what a d-bag he’s been on the majority of occasions we’ve had to hang out with him. Remember that first time they met? And he was hilarious and the best thing in the whole book? I want that guy back!

Meanwhile, Dr. John’s just looking like a champ in this section, damn his boring face, but it’s okay, because Polly shows back up finally, and I am pretty sure they are destined to be together. Dr. John asks Lucy out to the theater, which is somehow not a date, and while they’re there, the theater burns down. Dr. John heroically rescues a girl, and lo and behold, the girl is Polly!

Polly’s father is now a count (or was he already one? I dunno), and she’s Ginevra’s cousin, because of course there couldn’t be two blonde twits in one book without them turning out to be related. Polly asks Lucy if Dr. John is into Ginevra, and in keeping with her policy of not doing the super obvious thing that would put people at ease straightaway, Lucy does not say “Oh, he used to have a thing for her, but she disrespected his mother and he was OUT.” Instead, she’s like this:

What is Lucy’s plan? Yeah, we’ll have to wait until next time to find out. Knowing Lucy, it will make absolutely no sense and infuriate everyone involved.

The other thing that happens in this section is that Lucy starts seeing ghosts. Well, one ghost. A nun.

Oh, and Dr. John tells Lucy she’s only seeing visions because she’s so depressing all the time, and if she’d try to be happier, she wouldn’t have visions; and she bitch-slaps him with the following truth bomb: “Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.”

GREAT POINT.

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Remember last week, when Alice said that Charlotte Bronte was super weird and gave zero fucks about it? I didn’t really see it then, but I am coming around to Alice’s point of view. This is how Lucy Snowe describes waking up from a faint (Dr. John did rescue her, dammit):

I know [my soul] re-entered her prison with pain, with reluctance, with a moan and a long shiver. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a racking sort of struggle. The returning sense of sight came upon me, red, as if it swam in blood; suspended hearing rushed back loud, like thunder; consciousness revived in fear: I sat up appalled, wondering into what region, amongst what strange beings I was waking.

You weirdo, Charlotte Bronte. I am just sad you died so young and did not live to favor us with (I can only imagine) your ever-increasing weirdnesses as you wrote ten more novels before your death at the age of 80.

Anyway, so the big surprise in this section is that Dr. John is actually Graham, remember Graham from before?, and Lucy Snowe knew this all along but just didn’t bother to tell us?

Lucy Snowe you are such a bewilderment to me. Dr. John is accordingly bewildered. But because he is a gentleman (that doesn’t mean I want Lucy to marry him), he doesn’t ask her why the hell she didn’t say “hey bro, we know each other” LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN.

Anyway, he’s very chill about that (but still boring), and they have some chats about whether she is Catholic (God no), how Ginevra is behaving on her travels (unknown, but at a guess, slutty), and if Ginevra will ever return his affections. To the latter Lucy says this:

I declare, where Miss Fanshawe is concerned, you merit no respect; nor have you mine.

Oh, and then she feels bad that his feelings are hurt, so she apologizes, but she does it in the lamest way, which is the way where instead of giving a proper apology and explaining why your behavior was The Worst, you are all like “pleeeeease forgive me, pleeeeease,” which is garbage because then the apology isn’t about them, as it should be, and is instead about you and how sad you will be if they do not forgive you. (Which is lame.)

The whole thing smacks of the kind of behavior one would expect of a woman who wants to get with Dr. John when he finally gets over Ginevra. I am still pulling for M. Paul, but this section is blowing out my candles a little bit.

M. Paul shows up rather briefly to pester Lucy at an art gallery and tell her that as a lady she should have more patience with handicapped children even though, he confesses, she and he both know that handicapped children are the worst (seriously, Charlotte Bronte?) It’s . . . it’s not a great look for him. This has all been fairly discouraging. You should head over to Alice’s blog to see what other people have to say, though just know that if they want Lucy to get with Boring Dr. John, they are WRONG. WRONG.

The post The Villette Readalong Returns! appeared first on Reading the End.

I started Chapter Six with very warm feelings toward Lucy Snowe, because she had just come to a new city, and she was comforted in the midst of all the strangeness by realizing that she resides in the shadow of St. Paul’s. That’s some relatable stuff right there. But then she’s gotta go and be a d-bag again immediately.

I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE, LUCINDA.

And then, even though she has discovered how marvelous London is (and she is right, London is marvelous), she decides immediately to set sail for France instead of trying to make her way in the city in which she already resides and whose language she speaks.

Apart from being mad at Lucy for ditching the city she has immediately recognized as THE BEST, I kind of liked the whole sequence where she decides to sail off to France. I like how she’s just like, “w/e, maybe things will be fun in France,” and I like how she’s not great at arranging her transportation, and everyone she encounters is like:

Then there is like an eternity of Lucy Snowe knowing nothing and being bounced around from shitty lodging to shitty lodging. By an enormous stroke of good fortunate (or, in retrospect, maybe because the drama teacher had a little crush on her), she randomly gets a job for which she admits openly she has no qualifications, working for a lady named Madame Beck who creeps into her room the first night she comes to stay and stares at her for fifteen minutes.

Lucy quickly becomes an English teacher at the school, fine fine fine, and then matters pick up when a hot young doctor starts coming around the Beck household to tend to the elder Beck daughter’s imaginary illness. Lucy Snowe pays a lot of attention to him, but not because she’s into him. Not for that reason. Nope. Definitely not.

Dr. John, as it turns out, has a thing for somebody else, who he swears he is not into, but whom he nevertheless describes as spotless and good and unspeakably beautiful. Through a series of ridiculous circumstances, Lucy agrees to help protect the object of Dr. John’s affections from the attention of a crude and lame guy who’s also into her. This is all fairly boring to me.

NOT AT ALL BORING: Lucy makes a new friend, the drama teacher M. Paul, who talks her into helping out on the school play, locks her in a garret room to run lines, and then feeds her a sumptuous feast when she cops to being hungry. I love him. He is my favorite thing about this book so far.

I was irritable, because excited, and I could not help turning upon [the costume mistress] and saying, that if she were not a lady and I a gentleman, I should feel disposed to call her out.

 

“After the play, after the play,” said M. Paul. “I will then divide my pair of pistols between you, and we will settle the dispute according to form: it will only be the old quarrel of France and England.”

Ahahahaha. And then, to add compliment to gift (we really should have a positive version of “add insult to injury”), Lucy Snowe becomes abruptly awesome by spending the whole afterparty receiving confidence after confidence from hen-witted, beautiful little Ginevra and responding to them thus:

Um, and then everyone leaves for vacation, and Lucy gets incredibly depressed. But not depressed enough to ever consider becoming Catholic, because ew.

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