A marvelous sight, a mighty revelation: Vashti, the genius in Villette

Abstract

Villette (1853), the third published novel by Charlotte Brontë, isabout Lucy Snowe’s icy story, and her experience as a teacher in aforeign land in the fictitious country of Labassecour. The narrative isprofoundly controlled by the narrator, Lucy, and few are the momentsin which emotions take non-repressed forms within the text. One ofthe moments in which the opposite happens is in the chapter entitled“Vashti”, in which Lucy watches a play and gets impressed by the performance of the actress Vashti. The present work makes the relationbetween the history of the concept of genius, in its evolution throughWestern history, and the representation of the artist depicted in Brontë’snovel, in order to demonstrate her understanding of women genius.We can conclude that, for Brontë, the image of the artist is related toiconically rebel figures of Western tradition, and that the approachfound in Villette about the representation of women geniality deviates from the Victorian standard Brontë herself follows in other work.