Villette cover art

Villette

Penguin Classics

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Villette

By: Charlotte Brontë
Narrated by: Charlotte Ritchie
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife.

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette.

There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emmanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully moving study of isolation and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.

Public Domain (P)2019 Penguin Audio Classics

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Critic reviews

"Listening to Call the Midwife actress Charlotte Richie read Charlotte Brontë's lesser-known novel Villette was a hugely enjoyable experience on my morning commute on trains so packed that I could not stretch out my arms to open a book." (i News)
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This narration was beautiful, Charlotte didn't do the awful childlike voices I've heard other narrators mimic.

Simply beautiful

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Great narration but I dont know that I'd listen again - depressing and a bit odd. Charlotte did not convince me of her heros good points and her heroine is a prickly character. Dont invest too much in the story and you be fine!

Great performance, story not so much!

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I may have fallen out of love with Charlotte Brontë. This book has done the unthinkable. What a dull, annoying, laborious listen. Key moments between characters (not recognising old acquaintances in particular) just make you lose your faith in the author and the plot- line. And then a most annoying habit of describing everything in threes, repeating the same phrase in 3 different ways. So tiresome, so formulaic, so prosey. And then most irritating of all, one of the principal male characters, described almost throughout as ‘a little man’, imperious, misogynistic, waspish…. So nasty… he then turns out to be the love of the heroine’s life! After all his obnoxious behaviour, hissing insults into the heroine’s ear, then somehow she manages to fall in love with this man. And another thing, the endless ranting of Catholicism vs Protestantism… oh sooooo patronising, pious. I managed to finish it but it’ll be a long time before I read even jane eyre again.

Disappointing, lacking credibility, dull

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Charlotte was by far the worst writer of the three Bronte sisters. This was painful from begging to end. Do yourself a favour & just don't bother

I will die on this hill

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