After a foray into third-person omniscience in her second novel, Shirley, Charlotte Brontë's Villette returns to first-person narration for which Jane Eyre remains famous However, the novel's immediately lively and fiery eponymous narrator, Lucy Snowe de Villette begins and ends the novel as a dark and largely unrecognizable figure. As narrator, Lucy takes complete control of her. narrative, and yet its characterization is full of contradictions, which rejects and condemns the performance even as it recognizes an affinity for it in itself, fails to recognize the inherently performative nature of its own identity. eschewing performance, Lucy actively constructs and controls her character, playing a carefully rehearsed role for the reader Lucy Snowe Meanwhile, just as Lucy fails to recognize her own inevitable tendency to perform, she also fails. to recognize that even the most calculated performance is subject to audience interpretation. In her constant attempt to maintain complete control over both her own characterization and her portrayal of others, Lucy bristles when other characters exercise this same right, repeatedly rejecting alternative interpretations of her character even when they seem to align with his. Clinging to her elevated role as narrator, Lucy forgets that she is both participant and observer in the story she tells, equal parts watched and spectators. His identity is constructed as much by his own performance as by the interpretation that others make of it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Although performance motifs recur throughout the novel, the final undressing of the costumed "nun" can be understood as Villette's complete rejection of the possibility of objective characterization. The anticlimactic and bizarre, if vaguely humorous, revelation of the ghostly nun meant to embody Lucy's deepest psychological torment when she is nothing more than a mere tertiary character in drag exposes both the inability to Lucy and the reader to correctly interpret the character of Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy's inability to unmask another's performance in conjunction with her own unintentionally performative tendencies casts doubt on the representations of the other characters entrusted to her, as narrator. Lucy's unwitting role as observer and observed calls into question her reliability, but her role as unreliable narrator is symptomatic of a greater inability to truly know others. By making Lucy unknowable, Brontë positions the reader as one of the failed interpreters – Lucy fails to know the others just as the reader fails to know Lucy – suggesting a broader comment on the impossibility of interpretation and of a precise representation of oneself and the other. Long before Lucy discovered her thirst for acting during her first performance at Madame Beck's party, she had already taken on her first role: that of Lucy Snowe. Although she is a first-person narrator, Lucy often refers to herself by her first and last name, almost as if in the third person. These detached references to her own name frequently accompany Lucy's assertions about particular characteristics that she seems to consider – or wants to present as – inherent, thus becoming a verbal marker of her own characterization. In Lucy's first mention of her name, she states it as ifshe took an oath: “I, Lucy Snowe, plead innocent of this curse, of an overheated and discursive imagination” (10). Repetitions of this seemingly unnecessary antecedent appear alongside similar claims of impeccable composure: “I, Lucy Snowe, was calm” (19). It is unlikely that Lucy or Brontë believe that clarification of the first person antecedent is really necessary here. Rather, Lucy seems to use this rhetorical device in an attempt to establish and contain her ideal characterization within a verbal signifier. Indeed, the name “Lucy Snowe” is one of the few concrete identifying details that the novel provides about its narrator. However, through this obsessive eponymous characterization, the narrator ends up distancing herself from the Lucy Snowe she describes, almost making Lucy Snowe a separate character from the narrator. In fact, Lucy's name, with its almost heavy meaning—Lucy meaning "light," Snowe suggesting cold—literally seems to suggest the harsh, cold characteristics that Lucy lays claim to. Although Brontë's use of such a name is not a coincidence, I posit that Lucy's use of this name is not a coincidence either. From an unreliable narrator who not only fails to provide, but actively conceals almost all information about her past and family, there is little reason to assume that "Lucy Snowe" is not a pseudonym. Lucy clings to this assumed name as an embodiment of her own characterization, allowing this incarnation to become a character itself. Despite her repeated attempts to weld her name, borrowed or otherwise, to her first-person narration, Lucy herself often suggests a split between her name and her identity. In one case, after recounting an episode of “complicated and disturbing thoughts,” Lucy concludes: “However, this turmoil subsided: the next day I was Lucy Snowe again” (110). Here, Lucy suggests that her own status as Lucy Snowe is conditional, dependent on her performance of the qualities she has deemed appropriate for that character. Interestingly, other characters also seem to view Lucy's name as an intrinsic indication of their expectations of her identity, although these expectations differ from those of Lucy. Upon learning that Lucy is now a teacher, Polly remarks with surprise: "'Well, I never knew what you were, and I never thought to ask: to me you were always Lucy Snowe.'" (267). Like Lucy, Polly clings to the name Lucy Snowe as a signifier, although her (mis)interpretation of the signified has more to do with Lucy's class and rank than with her personality. Ultimately, Polly also suggests a conditional quality to Lucy's identity, a quality that Lucy questions. In response to Lucy's somewhat sarcastic question: "'And what am I now?' » Polly responds, "'Yourself, of course'" (267). This response, while seemingly redundant, actually does little to bridge the gap between "Lucy Snowe" and the identity of the narrator. If anything, Polly's refusal to rephrase the name only reinforces the distinction between "Lucy Snowe" and "yourself." Lucy actively plays the role of Lucy Snowe, both to the reader and to the other characters. However, as Polly's use of the name reveals, Lucy's performance remains open to interpretation, despite her best attempts to maintain control of her character. Lucy's active division of her own character resurfaces in her attitude toward the performance itself. During her initially involuntary participation in vaudeville at Madame Beck's party, Lucy discovers "a pronounced taste for dramatic expression." Even ifLucy even goes so far as to recognize this “new faculty” as “part of [her] nature,” she immediately rejects it, declaring that such a passion “would not befit a mere spectator of life” (131). . Here Lucy again alludes to a distinction between her nature and character. Although acting has "revealed" itself as part of her nature, Lucy rejects it, as it does not fit her carefully constructed characterization of calm, composed, and never prone to an "overheated imagination". Thus, Lucy's rejection of the performance becomes a kind of performance in itself. Lucy buries her performative impulse out of an obligation to continue interpreting the character she has created for herself, who must remain “a simple spectator of life”. Of course, Lucy can't be such a thing. She is no more capable of being a mere spectator than any of the characters she herself watches. There is no “quiet corner from which I could observe without being observed” (131). Because she controls the story, Lucy forgets that she is also one of those observed. When reminded of this, Lucy bristles, rejecting others' interpretations of her character, even when they align with her own. Although Lucy is dedicated to building and preserving her cold, unassuming character, she is not always happy when others characterize her this way. Throughout the novel, Lucy often represents herself as a shadow. Dressed in a “shadow dress,” Lucy remembers “feeling like a simple point of shadow on a field of light” (122). Yet, when offered a position as Polly's paid companion, Lucy retorts with the dismissive declaration: "I was not the shadow of a brilliant woman" (279). Lucy may well play the role of "quiet Lucy, a harmless creature like a shadow," but when she is thus characterized by an outside observer, Lucy attacks her lack of absolute control (315). It is not enough for Lucy to have complete control over her presentation, she must also be the sole performer, the impossibility of which she cannot accept. Lucy is neither the only performer nor the only audience member. She is as vulnerable to interpretation as the “fellow actors” whose performances she observes and seeks to represent in her narrative (130). Ultimately, Lucy cannot more accurately separate performance from identity in others than they can in her, or than she can. in itself. By positioning the reader as part of this series of failed performers, Villette takes a stand on the impossibility of objective characterization, cemented in the novel's absurd anti-climax. While the novel repeatedly resists climax and conclusion at various points in its final chapters, the bizarre unmasking of the ghostly "nun" figures as the cornerstone of the novel's rejection of objective characterization. The supposedly spectral nun, the novel's gothic apparition of choice, seems to haunt Lucy throughout her tale. Often appearing in moments of psychological distress, Lucy and the reader are invited to view the nun as "a case of spectral illusion" symbolic of a repressed aspect of Lucy's past or character (235). The nun's ultimate unmasking as a mere tertiary character—the Count of Hamal, Ginevra Fanshawe's underdeveloped and largely unimportant beau—reveals that the nun's spectral qualities and their relevance to Lucy were purely imaginary. Lucy and the reader wrongly interpret the nun as being somehow related to Lucy, when in fact the presence of the "nun" is entirely coincidental and is just an assumed disguise so that the lovers bring their affair to fruition.