Villette

Villette is a novel narrated by Lucy Snowe, a reserved young Englishwoman who, after misfortune at home, travels alone to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette. She finds work at a girls' school run by Madame Beck, where she teaches and observes the people around her. The book explores loneliness, watchfulness, desire and self-command, as Lucy meets a kindly doctor and a fiery, difficult schoolmaster. Drawing on the author's own time in Brussels, it is a quieter and more psychologically searching book than Jane Eyre, admired for its unusual, guarded narrator.