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Article: The two faces of Lucy Snowe: a study in deviant behavior. (character in Charlotte Bronte's "Villette")
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- March 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Who are you, Miss Snowe?. . .
Who am I indeed? Perhaps a
personage in disguise.(1)
Lucy's flip answer doesn't begin to untangle the mystery of who is Lucy Snowe. Is Villete a quaint nineteenth-century Gothic novel of lost love or a "terrifying account of female deprivation"?(2) Hidden within the layers of subtext, Charlotte Bronte explores human motivation in its bleakest and most frightening form. Lucy Snowe is to the outside world an independent, confident teacher, yet to the reader she embodies pain in the form of woman. Instead of asking who is Lucy Snowe, perhaps it is more important to ask how did Lucy become the woman she is? Since ...