Reading Group Guide

1. Discuss the character of Lucy Snowe. Do you find her to be an admirable heroine? What qualities do you like in her, or dislike? How do you think you would behave in her circumstances?

2. Writing to her publisher, Charlotte Bronte had this to say about Vilette's protagonist: 'I consider that [Lucy Snowe] is both morbid and weak at times; her character sets up no pretensions to unmixed strength, and anybody living her life would necessarily become morbid.' What do you think of this appraisal? Do her 'unheroic' qualities make her more sympathetic or less?

3. Virginia Woolf felt that Villette was Bronte's 'finest novel, ' and speaking about Bronte, wrote that "All her force, and it is the more tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, 'I love, I hate, I suffer.'" What do you think Woolf means? Do you find this observation interesting, appealing, or moving?

4. Why do you think Bronte sets the narrative of Villette in a foreign country?

5. Explore the theme of education in Villette: What is the role of education in Lucy Snowe's own life?

6. The conclusion of Villette is famously ambiguous (it was made purposefully so by Bronte). Do you find it a happy ending? A sad one? Discuss.