Fantasies of National Identification in Villette

In investigating the role—part invented and part real—that national and nationalist affiliations play in Villette, as well as the ways in which Lucy Snowe's shifting consciousness interprets and reinterprets these constructs, this paper argues that Charlotte Brontë employs mid-Victorian national histories as a prism through which to investigate the nature of national identification itself and its relationship to imagination, invention, and even hallucination. Lucy ultimately accommodates herself to Labassecourien national history through an affiliation with its narrative of liberation that, when seized pragmatically by M. Paul, provides Lucy with, as she says in the final chapter, "a wonderfully changed life, a relieved heart."