Villette (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charlotte Bronte [278]
The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee—‘keening’ at every window! It will rise—it will swell—it shrieks out long: wander as I may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing hours make it strong: by midnight, all sleepless watchers hear and fear a wild south-west storm.
That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had gorged their full sustenance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he fold the wings whose waft was thunder—the tremor of whose plumes was storm.
Peace, be still! Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered—not uttered till, when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!
Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.
Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Père Silas; Madame Walravens fulfilled her ninetieth year before she died. Farewell.
Endnotes
1 (p. 8) My visits to her resembled the sojourn of Christian and Hopeful: The reference is to two characters from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Lucy’s own spiritual journey in the novel echoes this allegorical narrative.
2 (p. 15) I, Lucy Snowe: Brontë originally named her heroine Lucy Frost and then changed her mind. She wrote: “At first—I called her ‘Lucy Snowe’ (spelt with an ‘e’) which ‘Snowe’ I afterwards changed to ‘Frost.’ Subsequently—I rather regretted the change and wished it ‘Snowe’ again. A cold name she must have” (Barker, The Brontës, p. 706; see “For Further Reading”).
3 (p. 74) We know your skill in physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance: The popular nineteenth-century science of phrenology held that you could read an individual’s character through the bone structure of his or her skull. Brontë had a reading done of her physiognomy with her publisher George Smith in 1851 while she was writing Villette (see Barker, p. 680) .
4 (p. 84) Désirée... was reading to me some little essay of Mrs. Barbauld’s: The reference is to Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825), a novelist and essayist who was a member of the eighteenth-century literary circle the Bluestockings, often satirized as a group of pedantic and pretentious women. Throughout the novel Lucy fears being mistaken for a “blue.”
5 (p. 123) This longing ... it was necessary to knock on the head; which I did ... after the manner ofjael to Sisera: Sisera, a cruel leader of the Israelites, escaped a battle by seeking shelter in Jael’s tent. While he was sleeping she murdered him by driving a nail into his brain. The biblical account is given in the book of Judges (chapter 4).
6 (p. 233) Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace: In the biblical account in the book of Daniel (chapter 3), three men refuse to worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s idol and he throws them into a burning furnace. God saves them and they emerge from the flames unharmed.
7 (p. 261) the desolate and sepulchral summit of a Nebo: Mount Nebo is in Jordan. In the Bible, God shows Moses the promised land from Nebo but refuses to let him travel there. Moses dies soon after (Deuteronomy 34).
8 (p. 286) I served two masters: I bowed down in the house of Rimmon, and lifted the heart at another shrine: In the Bible (2 Kings 5), Naaman is converted to believing in God when Elisha cures him of leprosy. After his conversion he continues to pray to the god Rimmon.
9 (p. 291) What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: Vashti is a beautiful biblical queen. The actress described here is modeled after the famous French actress Mademoiselle Rachel (Elisa Félix,