Naming of place and setting in Villette- Sarcasm and Authorial Commentary
Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Villette’ makes a conscious and dramatic departure from her creative norm when considering the names given to both character and place within the novel. The underlying significance of the French language, the naming of place and of character will be discussed in this essay. Indeed, Dunbar argues quite clearly that Villette is ‘almost entirely unremarked’ (1960) in this particular method, likely because Brontë’s previous three novels had contained names with little relevance or significance to the narratives they pertain to; names often drawn from familiar reality such as Rivers, Yorke and Moore, commonplace to a young woman living in Haworth, England. …show more content…
Fictional though they are, and possibly allegorical for real places in Belgium itself, the diminutive use of ‘Villette’ and the great kingdom of ‘Labassecour’, meaning ‘small city’ and ‘barnyard’ or ‘farm house’ respectively, make a clear point to the knowing reader of Brontë’s views of the potentially not-so-fictional occupants of such a kingdom: ‘the natives, you know, are intensely stupid and vulgar’ (Brontë, 2008). Similarly in Boue-Marine, which can be directly translated as ‘sea-mud’, the caustic tone of mockery is consistent. While Boue-Marine, to an English reader, sounds romanticised and paradisiacal, as a knowing writer, Brontë belittles the French and Belgian societies using ironic names which, to an Anglophone reader, seem grand and pompous, but to the imagined inhabitants would be deeply …show more content…
Adding to this rather unpleasant irony are the three worst-behaved young girls in Lucy’s class, whom Brontë fittingly named Virginie, (virginity) Blanche (white, pure) and Angélique (angelic), something their behaviour proves to be far short of. Certainly, these characters and their chosen names perfectly encapsulate Lucy Snowe and, by extension, Brontë’s attitudes towards the non-British ‘other’ of the time. This mistrust and uncertainty about the catholic and European community, as Gardiner and Davidson (1968) suggest, was shared by many of their contemporaries in Britain in the late nineteenth century, believing that British customs and mannerisms were superior to those of their less refined and gentile
Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Villette’ makes a conscious and dramatic departure from her creative norm when considering the names given to both character and place within the novel. The underlying significance of the French language, the naming of place and of character will be discussed in this essay. Indeed, Dunbar argues quite clearly that Villette is ‘almost entirely unremarked’ (1960) in this particular method, likely because Brontë’s previous three novels had contained names with little relevance or significance to the narratives they pertain to; names often drawn from familiar reality such as Rivers, Yorke and Moore, commonplace to a young woman living in Haworth, England. …show more content…
Fictional though they are, and possibly allegorical for real places in Belgium itself, the diminutive use of ‘Villette’ and the great kingdom of ‘Labassecour’, meaning ‘small city’ and ‘barnyard’ or ‘farm house’ respectively, make a clear point to the knowing reader of Brontë’s views of the potentially not-so-fictional occupants of such a kingdom: ‘the natives, you know, are intensely stupid and vulgar’ (Brontë, 2008). Similarly in Boue-Marine, which can be directly translated as ‘sea-mud’, the caustic tone of mockery is consistent. While Boue-Marine, to an English reader, sounds romanticised and paradisiacal, as a knowing writer, Brontë belittles the French and Belgian societies using ironic names which, to an Anglophone reader, seem grand and pompous, but to the imagined inhabitants would be deeply …show more content…
Adding to this rather unpleasant irony are the three worst-behaved young girls in Lucy’s class, whom Brontë fittingly named Virginie, (virginity) Blanche (white, pure) and Angélique (angelic), something their behaviour proves to be far short of. Certainly, these characters and their chosen names perfectly encapsulate Lucy Snowe and, by extension, Brontë’s attitudes towards the non-British ‘other’ of the time. This mistrust and uncertainty about the catholic and European community, as Gardiner and Davidson (1968) suggest, was shared by many of their contemporaries in Britain in the late nineteenth century, believing that British customs and mannerisms were superior to those of their less refined and gentile