regshoe

I thought I had read all of E. M. Forster's novels, but apparently The Longest Journey slipped past me. Must get around to that...

But back to Villette: YES, Lucy's voice is what really makes the book. She's so bitingly sarcastic and bitter and yet there's an aching vulnerability behind it? The passage you quoted about "warmer feelings" really captures it: on the surface she's so cutting and derisive, toward herself as much as the reader, and yet in the vehemence with which she rejects even the possibility you can feel a sense of longing. She wishes that she could connect with people but except for Ginevra (and later M. Paul), she always feels that she's at a sense of remove from them - that no one really sees her.

Ginevra doesn't always see Lucy clearly but at least she notices Lucy's presence, and is always thrusting herself on Lucy's notice. I love the snark between them - all Ginevra's sarcastic pet names for Lucy! ("Timon," my God.) Years ago I wrote a Ginevra/Lucy fic for Yuletide: it's such a fantastic, sharp-edged, spiky pairing.

Villette's ending is so brutal. In some ways I think the ambiguity makes it worse. If she said straightforwardly that M. Paul had drowned, it might not feel like she's lashing the reader across the face - you might feel that the experience of being loved, however briefly, had been tonic for her, you know? But she ends just as bitter as ever, just as convinced that she's set apart by Fortune to be miserable. Even the impersonal forces of nature are against her, drowning her love.