Villette-along Week 4: "You are at once mournful and mutinous"

All right, Charlotte. We've always agreed, you and I, that there's just something about a man with a crunchy exterior and a gooey center, but M. Paul. You're blowing it, dude.

We can all see that he's sometimes mean to her because he loves her and doesn't know quite what else to do about it. But he is a grown and educated man, and at a certain point it becomes counterproductive to have an adult tantrum in front of the object of your admiration and her classroom full of young girls.

The stove stood near my desk, and he attacked it; the little iron door was nearly dashed from its hinges, the fuel was made to fly.

"Est-ce que vous avez l'intention de m'insulter?" said he to me, in a low, furious voice, as he thus outraged, under pretence of arranging the fire.

Which is a real possibility if you don't back up off that stove.

But more interesting than M. Paul's continued reliance on the Crush Handbook for Adolescent Boys is the slooooooow metamorphosis of Lucy's attitude toward him. I mean, for the longest it was, "M. Paul was not a good little man, though he had good points," and "Never was a better little man, in some points, than M. Paul; never, in others, a more waspish little despot." But then she saw him rise majestically out of that orchestra pit at the Tribune and heard him talking politics with the perfect balance of reason and passion, and afterward he was all, "How did I do?" and she was all,

If he overhauls his technique, he may actually have a shot with her, because she seems pretty thoroughly disenchanted with Dr. John these days. And well she should be.

A sampling of gripes against Dr. John:

• He's getting reeeeally pushy about this Ghost Nun business and a little too adamant in his belief that Lucy is hallucinating everything. Can anyone remember a time in a Victorian novel when a man insisted a woman was seeing things and it ended well for her?
• He was writing Lucy regularly and showing up late at night to whisk her off to the theater and generally being a friend, and then he reunited with Polly and . . . SEVEN WEEKS later, his mom wrote Lucy to invite her over for dinner and see this old mutual acquaintance of theirs that she didn't know John had been spending his days with all that time. And then I do believe three months of silence from his quarter followed that. What. the. hell, John?
• He still talks down to Polly.
• He expects Lucy to do and be whatever suits him in the moment, and she's sick and tired of it. "I realized his entire misapprehension of my character and nature. He wanted always to give me a role not mine. Nature and I opposed him."
• He doesn't properly appreciate Vashti. I'll bet M. PAUL would've appreciated Vashti.

Yeah, let's end on that. Vashti. That whole section of chapter 23 was seriously intense and I'm sure laden with meaning I'll never grasp. Not only was it a bit of a turning point in Lucy's infatuation with John but I think a moment of personal epiphany for her and just a damn good description of a complex woman.

Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain, for her, has no result in good; tears water no harvest of wisdom: on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong; and her strength has conquered Beauty, has overcome Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair.

At first it's like . . . is this an endorsement or a judgment, Lucy? And then you forget about forming an opinion of the woman or even understanding what the hell this opera is about, because Vashti is a gorgeous mess of qualities, "a mighty revelation." And that could apply to Lucy, because everyone has a particular view of her personality (Madame Beck: learned and blue; Miss Fanshawe: caustic, ironic, and cynical; Mr. Home: model teacher, essence of the sedate and discreet; M. Paul: adventurous, indocile, audacious), and she finds that variation ridiculous. But maybe with the help of Vashti she could begin to see that it's possible to be all those things at once.

And John's reaction to the same spectacle that inspired so much introspection for Lucy? "He judged her as a woman, not an artist: it was a branding judgment."

You don't want a man like that, Lucy. And you may not want a jealous little wasp who embarrasses you in public, either. You don't have to choose either of them. You can stay independent. You can even choose Ginevra if you want! It would definitely do her some good.

*sound moral drubbing*