Villette

A deluxe Harper Perennial Legacy Edition, with an introduction from Mallory Ortberg.

Lucy Snowe is a young woman alone in the world after a terrible event of which she never speaks. With no home, no family, and no prospects, she sets out on her own to the small French town of Villette, where she finds work as a governess at a boarding school for girls. When a handsome doctor from her past appears in Villette and an irritable schoolmaster develops feelings for her, Lucy believes she may at last be free from loneliness - if her rigorous self-control doesn't conceal her true passion.

Based on Charlotte Bronte's own experiences at a boarding school in Belgium, Villette is an intense psychological portrait of its heroine, a woman who struggles to find independence and love on her own terms.