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Throughout “Villette” by Charlotte Bronte Lucy’s narration makes it clear that this performance is one that has drawn an impressive crowd; the theatre is so full that she describes it as “crammed to its roof” (Chapter 23, para. 25). The show is apparently so important that even the “royal and noble” are in attendance (Chapter 23, para. 25); Lucy remarks that she feels “deeply…privileged” (Chapter 23, para. 25) to be among them, and she is in a state of anxious anticipation as she longs for the performance to begin. Lucy is desperate to “see a being of whose powers I had heard reports”  (Chapter 23, para. 25), and she muses whether the actress will “justify her renown” (Chapter 23, para. 25). Lucy describes her feelings of anticipation as “severe and austere, yet of riveted interest,” waiting for the woman who “was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet” for whom Lucy awaits “her rising” (Chapter 23, para. 25). With these dramatic, evocative descriptions, the reader is put into a state of waiting that is as anticipation-filled as Lucy’s own.

When the actress does make her appearance in “Villette” by Charlotte Bronte, Lucy’s idealization of her is challenged by a more complex character. The actress is a star who “could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might…but…seen near…was a chaos—hollow, half-consumed, an orb perished or perishing….” (Chapter 23, para. 26). The woman is a “royal Vashti, a queen,” but is also “wasted like wax in flame” (Chapter 23, para. 26). These pairing of opposites in “Villette” by Charlotte Bronte are puzzling, and Lucy’s reactions are just as complicated. She remarks, “It was a marvelous sight: a mighty revelation” (Chapter 23, para. 28), and then seems to offer a perspective that is completely contradictory: “It was a spectacle low, horrible immoral” (Chapter 23, para. 28). The resolution of the play on stage is also full of contradiction. Lucy reports that “Suffering…struck that stage empress,” yet the character “stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it” (Chapter 23, para. 30). How is the reader to make sense of all of these paradoxes?

The key, perhaps, is understanding the symbolic significance that the play at the theatre represents. The theatre becomes a double, a projection through which psychological conflicts can be worked on and worked out, both by actors and actresses, but also—and more importantly in this case—by the members of the audience. Theatre is both a projective and a reflective act. In other words, the play both reflects life as it is but also, in some circumstances, reflects life as we might like it to be. The play, then, is really an interplay between reality or the appearance of reality and fantasy. What fascinates Lucy about the play is that the protagonist is so much like herself, a woman full of contradictions, a woman who is both good and bad, who has aspects that are at the same time compelling and repellent. In Vashti, Lucy sees herself mirrored. At the same time, she sees possibilities for self-representation and action that she might not have imagined before having seen the play. This realization will become crucial in the events that follow the play, though it is only in the final chapter when Lucy asks the reader, and herself, “Do you scout the paradox? Listen” (Chapter 42, para. 3).

In the final lines of “Villette” by Charlotte Bronte, Lucy helps unravel the paradox that was first fully revealed in the theatre, but she leaves it up to the reader to make meaning out of the scenes and events for himself or herself. She declares: “Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return”  (Chapter 42, para. 19). Life, of course, has all of these dramatic elements, and our lives are as complex, contradictory, and paradoxical as the lives that are portrayed on stage. Perhaps they are even more complex. As Lucy comes to conclusions about her own life and circumstances, recognizing their theatricality and extracting the lessons from them, so too can the reader understand more about life’s dramas.

Charlotte Bronte’s appropriation of a variety of dramatic techniques in “Villette”, ranging from the subtle mimicry of the theatrical genre to the overt inclusion of a chapter principally concerned with the presentation of a stage performance, are effective devices for revealing some of the most profound aspects of human beings’ psychological conditions. Her skillful use of the theatrical elements in Vilette, demonstrate how complex the motivations, passions, and relationships of human beings are. At the end of Villette, Lucy seems to have recovered psychologically. As the result of integrating her experiences and coming to a clear understanding about them, Lucy has been able to achieve a “new state of circumstances, a wonderfully changed life, [and] a relieved heart” (Chapter 42, para. 6). The reader who is able to understand how the theatre and the theatrical function in Villette may be able to extract similar lessons and apply them to his or her own life.

Work Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Villette. Retrieved April 3, 2007 from http://www.online-literature.com/brontec/villette/