I've just finished reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte for my Masterpieces of 19th Century British Literature class. It's an uneven book; there are passages so gorgeous that I felt like snarling at anyone who would keep from turning the pages, and yet other stretches so seemingly unconnected to the heart of the book I felt like throwing the thing across the room. Regardless of its unevenness, it's a powerful book, the story of Lucy Snowe, a woman who threw herself into an unknown future, as the teacher in a small boarding school in Belgium, who "put on pretend shyness to disguise her real shyness ... because she felt if she was disguised as a shy governess, she created more space in her mind for her secret passionate self" (Ignes Sodre, 1995). What unfolds is a story about a private, intensely passionate woman trying desperately to establish her own identity in a self-imposed exile in a foreign environment.
I can identify deeply with Lucy Snowe. I too have a persona in place most of the time to disguise my secret, passionate self. Passion, though much worshipped in film, fiction, and poetry, is regarded with much suspicion in the "real" world. People can be intimidated or discomfited by the passions of others, especially passions they don't understand. But for me, a life without passion is no life at all, as Ignes Sodre suggests in the introduction to the Modern Library Classics edition of Villette. Of Lucy's unrequired love for her countryman, Dr. John Bretton, she says:
Life with Dr. John would be exceedingly boring for her, however kind and handsome he may be, because he is so entirely out of touch with who she is, and because of how different they are. Lucy--like Jane Eyre before her--wants to be profoundly known; sexual passion, for both Jane and Lucy, is at its highest when the man can look inside them and see their passion. This mental penetration isn't meant to be just a metaphor for physical contact: there is tremendous excitement in the coming together of minds.
Lucy forms an unexpected bond of heart and mind with M. Paul Emmanuel, a fellow teacher at the boarding school. He is everything Dr. Bretton is not: small, ugly, acerbic, and worst of all to her steadfast Protestant heart, Catholic. One of the most beautiful love scenes I've ever read describes the letters they write to one another during M. Emmanuel's 3-year stay in the West Indies.
"By every vessel he wrote; he wrote as he gave and as he loved, in full-handed, full-hearted plenitude. He wrote because he liked to write; he did not abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and paper, because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her; because he was faithful and thoughtful, because he was tender and true. There was no sham and no cheat, and no hollow unreal in him. Apology never dropped her slippery oil on his lips--never proffered by his pen, her coward's feints and paltry nullities: he would give neither a stone, nor an excuse--neither a scorpion, nor a disappointment; his letters were real food that nourished, living water that refreshed."
I have felt this kind of passion. It gives the world its lustre, and my life its season.
I saw this film for the first time on VHS in the mid-80's (it was released in 1983) when Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie were still smooth and cool as porcelain. A marginalized, anti-social teen, I could see myself as Miriam Blaylock, winnowing through her acquaintance for the perfect lovers to share her eternity--never able to dissociate completely from the knowledge of their inevitable decline and loss. This is a vampire film where the word "vampire" is never once articulated, and eternal life (and love) is spoken of in wistful refrain. "Forever. Forever and ever." Forever young. Forever in love. Forever alive. It's no wonder that the theme still speaks to me over twenty years later, but it's impressive that the film itself has weathered these many years so gracefully. It still has power. Every frame is still beautiful, every song drenched in elegant pathos, the artistic choices still compelling. Twenty years later, I finally understand my feelings about the silent, light-drenched, contemplative final scene. 