"Lucy Snowe, in flight from an unhappy past, leaves England and finds work as a teacher in Madame Beck's school in 'Villette'. Strongly drawn to the fiery autocratic schoolmaster Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Lucy is compelled by Madame Beck's jealous interference to assert her right to love and to be loved." "Based in part on Charlotte Bronte's experience in Brussels ten years earlier, Villette (1853) is coloured by her sadness and isolation after the deaths...