Villette 16-20 "don't be demonstative, John, or I shall faint"

   IN WHICH Lucy wakes from her faint to find herself surrounded by familiar furniture and we find out that HEYO: Dr John = Graham Bretton in a major way but he, of course being an unobservant MAN (this is the impression I got from ol' CB), did not recognize Lucy Snowe. Incidentally, Lucy Snowe has been aware for QUITE SOME TIME that Dr John is in fact Dr GRAHAM but didn't bother to, I don't know, mention it? I mean, sure, last time they saw each other he was a 16 year old with a weird friendship with a 6 year old and ol' Luce was a surly teen, but you'd think she'd be like "hey! You and your ma are the closest thing I have to family! How is the old bird?" But no. Lucy Snowe just can't be bothered to say more than eight words together when she talks to Dr Graham/John, even though she is super in love with him.

Lucy Snowe's attitude towards LIFE ITSELF

   I'm somewhat concerned about the future of JG/LS and their relationship, since she uses phrases like "as long as we continued friends", and even though he says he has Gotten Over his infatuation with Ginevra, things seem to not bode well for Lucy and her love-life. ALSO: is M Paul in love with Lucy in his own distinctly French way? I'm concerned over these things. I like Lucy Snowe, even if she doesn't like me, and I want the best for her, poor thing. PLUS it is inevitable that Polly will reappear and THEN where will we be?

if LS doesn't live happily ever after

   I feel like Lucy Snowe is closer in character to Mr Rochester than to Jane Eyre. If Lucy Snowe had an inconveniently insane husband, she would have no problem locking him in a tower. (Speaking of which I feel like my fellow read-along-ers would be the type of people who would like the Jane Eyre musical which is, honestly, pretty ridiculous, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to sing it very dramatically wherever I go. Sirens in my car on long drives, over and over, can't get enough.) Here is something I appreciate about Lucy Snowe: she uses "forsooth" in her inner monologue. Yes, LS, we'd probably be friends, we'd probably make fun of everyone around us, we'd probably secretly be a bit sensitive and prone to falling in love with the wrong person and then denying it, and even though you're still kind of infuriating, pals we would become. 

   Poor Lucy when Mrs Bretton gets a pink dress for her! I don't know about y'all but I know how I feel when I bravely try on dresses of the pink variety and immediately get anxious and take them off. Once I tried on a pink dress at Anthropologie thinking that I had maybe gotten over my antipathy towards pink, whether it be bright or pale, and my friend said "you look so good! You should buy it!" and I averted my eyes from the mirror and quickly got myself back into black and grey. Wow, that's a poorly structured sentence but I'm not sure how to fix it. "A pink dress! I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not proved it." INDEED, LUCY SNOWE, INDEED.

I KNEW IT NOT

  
   Dr John/Graham: recklessly unwinding thread since 1853.

   Lucy Snowe hating on non-realism in art is pretty hilarious, I gotta say. Imagine how she would react to Jackson Pollock or Picasso or even Caravaggio. She loves paintings of fruit and simple Scotch melodies and she hates paintings of Cleopatra but she also dislikes simpering French portrayals of lame ladies. All her talk of Cleopatra reminded me that a) I haven't thought of or looked at my favorite painting of Cleopatra lately, and b) I'm the kind of person who has a favorite painting of Cleopatra. NB exhibit Cleo:

 
   This painting is great for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it's portraying the story where Caesar keeps refusing to talk to Cleo so she wraps herself in a rug and has herself and the rug delivered to him as a present and when the rug is brought to him she emerges from it and is all "yo, Caesar, we got some State Business to discuss" and then their ill-fated relationship starts. She's all "I woke up like this" and he's all "woah, lady, no shirt no shoes no service" and it's even a pretty great rug. (Fun fact: did you know that Cleopatra wasn't really Egyptian, but Greek? She was a Ptolemy!) Cleopatra was conniving and cunning and gets a bad rap and the story of her killing herself via snakebite is most likely apocryphal and she was totally BA right til the end. Just picked the wrong side, she did.

I haven't actually seen this movie

   P.S. the aforementioned Sirens, since I obvs can't tell you about it and NOT foist it on you. OMGosh listen listen listen.