Charlotte Brontë's final novel Villette (1853) is associated with ambiguity because of its open ending: Does M. Paul return to narrator-protagonist Lucy Snowe or is he killed in a storm raging on the Atlantic? Taking its famous ending as a starting point, this study explores Villette as a text in which ambiguity is all-pervasive in various ways. Among these is the narrator's ambivalent attitude toward herself and others, epitomised in her stylistic idiosyncrasies. The links between ambiguity and doubt are explored through an analysis of Lucy's signature phrase, "I know not," expressive of her existential doubts and questioning attitude toward the world. The analysis moreover focuses on the motif of the oracle as a traditionally ambiguous utterance, and explores its relevance in the context of the generic tradition of Villette as a fictional autobiography. Another focus is the interplay of figurative and literal levels of meaning in the allegorical episodes, creating ambiguity.

Charlotte Brontës final novel Villette (1853) is associated with ambiguity because of its open ending: Does M. Paul return to narrator-protagonist Lucy Snowe or is he killed in a storm raging on the Atlantic? Taking its famous ending as a starting point, this study explores Villette as a text in which ambiguity is all-pervasive in various ways. Among these is the narrators ambivalent attitude toward herself and others, epitomised in her stylistic idiosyncrasies. The links between ambiguity and doubt are explored through an analysis of Lucys signature phrase, I know not, expressive of her existential doubts and questioning attitude toward the world. The analysis moreover focuses on the motif of the oracle as a traditionally ambiguous utterance, and explores its relevance in the context of the generic tradition of Villette as a fictional autobiography. Another focus is the interplay of figurative and literal levels of meaning in the allegorical episodes, creating ambiguity.

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The reimagining of Jane Eyre as a gutsy, heroic serial killer that The New York Times Book Review calls “wonderfully entertaining” and USA Today describes as “sheer mayhem meets Victorian propriety”—nominated for the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel. “Reader, I murdered him.” A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess. Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: Can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past? “A thrill ride of a novel. A must read for lovers of Jane Eyre, dark humor, and mystery.”—PopSugar.com

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A Study Guide for Charlotte Bronte's "Villette," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

On the two hundredth anniversary of her birth, a landmark biography transforms Charlotte Brontë from a tragic figure into a modern heroine. Charlotte Brontë famously lived her entire life in an isolated parsonage on a remote English moor with a demanding father and siblings whose astonishing childhood creativity was a closely held secret. The genius of Claire Harman’s biography is that it transcends these melancholy facts to reveal a woman for whom duty and piety gave way to quiet rebellion and fierce ambition. Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte’s inner life with absorbing, almost novelistic intensity. She seizes upon a moment in Charlotte’s adolescence that ignited her determination to reject poverty and obscurity: While working at a girls’ school in Brussels, Charlotte fell in love with her married professor, Constantin Heger, a man who treated her as “nothing special to him at all.” She channeled her torment into her first attempts at a novel and resolved to bring it to the world's attention. Charlotte helped power her sisters’ work to publication, too. But Emily’s Wuthering Heights was eclipsed by Jane Eyre, which set London abuzz with speculation: Who was this fiery author demanding love and justice for her plain and insignificant heroine? Charlotte Brontë’s blazingly intelligent women brimming with hidden passions would transform English literature. And she savored her literary success even as a heartrending series of personal losses followed. Charlotte Brontë is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time. Shaped by Charlotte’s lifelong struggle to claim love and art for herself, Harman’s richly insightful biography offers readers many of the pleasures of Brontë’s own work.