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.

Villette, 1-5

    Having read Jane Eyre before, I had some expectations coming into this book. Mostly I was concerned that I wouldn't enjoy it, since I thoroughly dislike Jane Eyre and refuse to put in the effort of reading Wuthering Heights because the story is so monumentally ridiculous. Nay, I say, nay! I have gotten into the habit of giving the Brontes the side-eye, except maybe Anne because The Tenant of Wildfell Hall doesn't glorify being in love with an abusive and brooding rich dude. So far, however, Villette suits me fine, and I'm ready to commit for the long run.

ready to read Bronte, oh yeah, better believe it

    Some thoughts while reading chapters one to five:

• "Wait, her name isn't  Villette? Then who is Villette!?"
• "Has Charlotte Bronte ever...met a child?"
• "Oooooh, Villette is a PLACE."
• "I forgot how long classics take to set the scene."
• "I feel like Lucy Snowe doesn't like me."
• "Why are you introducing so many characters just to dispose of them a chapter later, Charlotte? Why?"

   My impressions so far are basically that Lucy Snowe is deigning to condescend to me, Paulina is improbable as, and Miss Marchmont was an entirely extraneous character. It may not sound like it, but on the whole I am enjoying the book. Classics have a pace all their own which takes some getting used to, it starts out almost too slow and quickly becomes comfortable. Classics are good for curling up with in a way that other books aren't. I don't read Cormac McCarthy the same way I read Charlotte Bronte. If I were to compare books to bodies of water, the classics would be a wide, slow-moving, slightly muddy river; providing plenty of opportunity to just float along with the story while keeping some things hidden in subtext and cultural context that you have to delve a bit deeper for. 

   I wasn't feeling super thrilled about continuing this book until chapter five, when this happened:

"How difficult, how oppressive, how puzzling seemed my flight! In London for the first time; at an inn for the first time; tired with traveling; confused with darkness; palsied with cold; unfurnished with either experience or advice to tell me how to act, and yet - to act obliged. [...] What was I doing here along in great London? What should I do on the morrow? What prospects had I in life? What friends had I on earth? Whence did I come? Whither should I go? What should I do?"

   And suddenly I was identifying and sympathizing with Lucy, and didn't mind her somewhat over-bearing tone or her referring to herself by her full name or anything else, really.

this is what you sound like, Lucy Snowe.

   A couple of years ago I flew from Canada to New Zealand and Australia by myself for about five months. I spent some of that time with various friends who were in various parts of Australia, but I was largely alone on my trip. As soon as Lucy Snowe started talking about the feeling of being alone in London with no idea what to do, I remembered landing in Auckland and freaking the hell out because what was I thinking? What had I gotten myself into? It's not on the same scale as Lucy's predicament, but it's nice to know that being afraid of the unknown and of being alone/directionless or of making a horrible error in judgement by coming here (wherever "here" is) is a pretty universal experience and isn't limited to me or even to my century. And while I intellectually realize that these fears and feelings are pretty common, it's still nice to have palpable evidence that they're a part of the human experience. My trip to the Southern Hemisphere was awesome, by the way, and I don't even regret that first bit of crying and quadruple-guessing myself. Part of the experience, yo.

Mr T understands us

   Onward and upward.