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Themes

Villette is most commonly celebrated for its explorations of gender roles and repression. In The Madwoman in the Attic, critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have argued that the character of Lucy Snowe is based in part on William Wordsworth's Lucy poems, emphasizing this idea of a feminine re-writing. In addition, critics have explored the issues of Lucy's psychological state in terms of the patriarchal constructs that form her cultural context. [1]

Villette also incisively explores isolation and cross-cultural conflict in Lucy’s attempts to master the French language, as well as the conflicts between her English Protestantism and the Catholicism (her denunciation of which is unsparing: 'God is not with Rome') of Labassecour.