Lucy Snowe: A Direct Assault on the Victorian Oppression of Women (ENG 436)
Lucy Snowe: A Direct Assault on the Victorian Oppression of Women
Charlotte Brontë’s Villette is a novel of rebellion against the Victorian expectations and restrictions on women. Brontë’s protagonist, Lucy Snowe, serves as both a depiction of Brontë’s own struggles and as a representation of how a powerful, self-reliant woman can and should defy convention. Lucy’s story also brings into sharp focus the sacrifices her defiance of cultural norms requires. Lucy Snowe is repeatedly faced with difficult choices and overwhelming odds. The choices she must make, and the way she makes them, are a critique of the systemic oppression caused by the highly patriarchal Victorian society in which women had few rights and fewer options for independence. Brontë, uses Lucy Snowe as a cathartic expression of a woman’s struggles that in many ways mirror her own, a condemnation of Victorian society’s limitations on women, and an example of how a strong, self-reliant woman can endure and succeed despite the obstacles society places in her path.
Charlotte Brontë experienced a significant amount of tragedy in her life, and she also struggled against the restrictions placed on Victorian women. The death of Charlotte Brontë’s mother when Charlotte was young, the subsequent deaths of her siblings, along with her own poor health and isolation provided the backdrop for the isolation and loneliness that dominates Lucy Snowe’s existence. The societal pressures placed on Brontë by both her father and the publishing establishment, informed her characters in both Jane Eyre and in Villette. Both Brontë’s father and the poet laureate Robert Southey “warned her that women had no right to possess a literary career. Later in life, Charlotte wrote that her father had always instilled in her the view of writing and literary desires as a rebellion from her female duties” (Wein 739). This advice, and her struggle to get published, the requirement to publish under a man’s—or at least vaguely gendered—pseudonym for herself and her sisters are all acts of cultural oppression that Charlotte Brontë experienced and which her characters defy.
It is important to briefly compare Jane and Lucy in order to see the very deliberate choices Brontë makes in Villette and how they differ between the two female protagonists and their relationship with the Victorian norm. In Jane Eyre, the protagonist battles convention and defies gender roles and norms, but not to the extent Lucy Snowe does in Villette. Arguably, Jane Eyre was a rough draft for Lucy Snowe. Jane Eyre defies some gender roles as a fiery, defiant child, but as she grows older she learns to conform and to exist within the confines of Victorian society and ultimately fills the role of wife and mother that is expected of her—even though she does manage to find a partner in Rochester that is more her equal than the dominant patriarch. To illustrate the point, Jane shares that she is her “husband’s life as fully as he is [hers] … and to be together is at once as free as in solitude” (Jane Eyre 435). Lucy Snowe follows a very different path. While she does serve as a governess and a teacher in a similar fashion to Jane, she does not capitulate to a normative gender role of wife at the end of the novel. On the contrary, she defies and fights gender norms pushed on her by the male characters in the novel at every opportunity. Further, she does not find marital bliss. Instead, all opportunities for Lucy to slide into a normative gendered relationship are thwarted by Brontë. It is essential the Lucy Snowe remain independent and when it appears that Lucy might slip into a life of Victorian expectation, Brontë ensures it will not happen by killing Paul Emanuel in a shipwreck. While the explicit ending is left to the reader to imagine, Emanuel’s death is heavily implied. Brontë left it to the reader to finish the story as an act of concession to her father who wanted her to write a happy ending (Villette 538). Even the concession is an act of rebellion by leaving the ending vague and unsatisfying of her father’s wishes. Paul Emanuel’s death is a deliberate and necessary choice on Brontë’s part to preserve the powerful, independent female archetype she created over the course of the novel.
Brontë’s Villette takes shape as a demonstration of female power from the very beginning of the work. Katherine Kim argues that even the novel’s title is a demonstration of feminine power: “Villette names … [a place] that hints at both human society (a city name representing a societal establishment location) and the feminine through the feminine ending ‘-ette” (Kim 410). Similarly, Lucy Snowe exercises her power from the first pages of the novel through the way she controls the narrative and thus the reader’s window into her world. (Forsyth 18) She describes her surroundings, other characters like Graham and Polly before she introduces herself. By withholding this information, she is exercising her power over the story, its telling, and over the reader by keeping him in the dark until she is ready to reveal what she thinks is pertinent. She does not share how she feels about the events that surround her with any reliability. When Lucy fails to inform the reader that she recognized Dr. John as Graham from her childhood, the reader becomes painfully aware that Lucy’s narration is done on her terms and rather than reveal information in an impartial, informative fashion, Lucy controls what the reader is allowed to know and is as likely to withhold key information as she is to share her sentiments.
The journey that brings Lucy from the first pages at the Bretton home to Madame Beck’s boarding school and finally to a school of her own is a manifesto of female independence demonstrated through a refusal to conform to Victorian gender roles. Lucy Snowe makes vague references to her childhood as an orphan, gives us a glimpse into her life with the Bretton family and Polly, and subsequently fast-forwards eight years to the point that she is gets hired by Miss Marchmont. She never explains her life and rather chooses to control her story by telling the reader that she “will permit the reader to picture me … idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft.” (Villette 35). Upon Marchmont’s death, Lucy travels to London alone and without more than her luggage and £15. The act of traveling unaccompanied and without direction is a counterculture act. When, after a short time in London, she boards a ship at night bound for continental Europe, she is again defying gender norms and standards. To illustrate the point, Brontë provides the encounter with Ginevra on the deck of the ship. Ginevra serves as a contrasting figure against which to evaluate Lucy’s actions. Ginevra is living the life Victorian culture and norms expect from a woman. She is flighty, superficial, uninterested in learning, and frivolous. To further make the point, Lucy’s dialogue with Ginevra outlines the many ways in which they are opposites and how Ginevra conforms to expectations and Lucy does not. Lucy proclaims that she is not clever because she doesn’t speak other languages, that she “[has] not the least idea” where she is going and that she is going “where Fate may lead [her].” (Villette 54-55) The relationship between Ginevra and Lucy throughout the rest of the novel serves as a reminder of the contrast between a stereotypical Victorian young woman and Lucy Snowe.
Lucy Snowe also rebels against Victorian norms and expectations in her relationships with men. Even though Lucy has a romantic attraction to Dr. John that she ultimately abandons due to his love for Polly, it is her relationship with Paul Emanuel that provides multiple examples of female rebellion to norms. Paul Emanuel repeatedly tries to force Lucy into conformity and each time Lucy resists with spectacular wit and thereby frustrates Paul. Katherine Kim draws attention to several instances where the friction between Lucy and Paul centers on gender issues and expectations when she writes: “Lucy Snowe complicates and combats displays of female bodies contained or controlled by men—especially by the man that challenges her personal control the most, Paul Emanuel.” (Kim 413). One of the most significant is the episode that centers on the paintings “Cleopatra” and “La vie d’une femme.” Not only does Lucy invert the expectations of women in this scenario by looking at the semi-nude of “Cleopatra” and dismissing the painting series of how a woman should act depicted in “La vie d’une femme,” Brontë subverts the arguments by juxtaposing the feminine form by describing a man, Colonel de Hamal, in a way that is fitting for a Victorian woman. (Kim 416) Further, Kim argues, that “Lucy again asserts control over what she sees by requesting Paul move, thus subtracting him from her line of sight.” (Kim 416) In this scene Lucy not only defies Paul, she takes control of the situation by removing him from her sight by telling him to move and she maintains control over herself by deciding what to look at, how to judge it, and subsequently casts femininity on to De Hamal.
The most significant scene in Villette that showcases very clearly Lucy’s effort to control how she is perceived, how she undermines those that would control her, and how she takes control over a situation, is when she acts in the play for Madame Beck’s fête. Paul Emanuel demands that she play a male part in the play after another actress fails to show for the event, feigning illness. Paul exerts dominance over Lucy by locking her in the attic to rehearse and letting her out after some time to eat. He demands that for the play she wears a costume to appear as a man, but Lucy refuses. Instead, Lucy insists “it must be arranged in [her] own way: nobody must meddle; the things must not be forced upon me. Just let me dress myself.” (Villette 139) After dressing, Lucy continues her display of power as she faces down Miss St. Pierre with a challenge: “if she were not a lady, and I a gentleman, I should feel disposed to call her out.” (Villette 140). This moment shows the reader Lucy Snowe as a dominant woman, able to face down the aggressive and dominant Paul Emanuel while maintaining both her sense of self and her dignity, while simultaneously fully embracing the male role for the play and with great wit challenging her female adversary to a duel.
Charlotte Brontë fought a great number of battles throughout her life. She battled her way through a childhood with a distant father and the loss of her mother at an early age, outlived all her siblings, and struggled for recognition as an author in a culture that oppressed women and confined them to a very narrow definition of what was appropriate for them. Her characters draw heavily from her life experiences and resemble the kind of people among which she grew up—they exhibited “the old hereditary spirit of independence, ready ever to resist authority which was conceived to be unjustly exercised.” (Gaskell 20) It is clear that Charlotte Brontë chafed against the constraints she faced in her literary career and that her characters evolve as an act of resistance against the confines of Brontë’s society. Lucy Snow is the clearest and most refined example of resistance. She resists every effort to confine her, refuses to be categorized, exercises extreme intellect and it despite claiming not to be clever and wins all her battles. The only thing that eludes Lucy Snowe is a loving relationship and happiness with a partner. This is a necessary sacrifice in order to maintain Lucy’s independence and serves as an exclamation point in the argument against Victorian custom. In order to be independent and maintain power and control over her individuality, Lucy must remain alone.
Works Cited
Brontë, Charlotte, Villette. 1853. Edited by Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten. Oxford UP, 2008.
--- . Jane Eyre: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed. Edited by Beth Newman. Bedford/St. Martin, 2014.
Forsyth, Beverly. "The Two Faces of Lucy Snowe: A Study in Deviant Behavior. “Studies in the Novel, vol. 29, no. 1, 1997, pp. 17-25. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/212702548?accountid=7305.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. 1857. Edited by Elisabeth Jay. Penguin Books, 1997.
Kim, Katherine J. "Corpse Hoarding: Control and the Female Body in "Bluebeard," "Schalken the Painter," and “Villette.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 43, no. 4, 2011, pp. 406-427. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/916578072?accountid=7305.
Wein, Toni. "Gothic Desire in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette." Studies in English Literature, 1500 - 1900, vol. 39, no. 4, 1999, pp. 733-746. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/204325993?accountid=7305.
