Ambivalent Desires in Charlotte Brontë's Villette and Grace Aguilar's Vale of Cedars

Abstract

My paper argues that religious tolerance in Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette (1853) and Grace Aguilar's novel The Vale of Cedars; or, the Martyr (1850) translates into a desire for the other. The anti-Catholic sentiment of both narratives is well established: Charlotte Brontë articulates the threats English Protestants felt from 'Papal aggression', while the Anglo-Jewish writer Aguilar uses the Spanish Inquisition to show that, like the English, Jews have been persecuted by Catholics. Both authors, however, express a more complicated engagement with Catholicism, suggesting through their heroines that sensual desire is the product of toleration and self-realization. The Catholic Other in each novel is an ambivalent attraction for the heroine. On the one hand, Lucy Snowe is charmed by Catholic devotion, manifested in Paul Emanuel. On the other, she is repulsed by Catholic practice, manifested in Madame Beck. For Marie Morales, sexual desire is at odds with religious devotion and patriarchal authority. While her husband legally possesses her body, her Catholic lover governs her desire, making her sexually transgressive. It is only her platonic desire for Queen Isabella that makes acceptable Marie's longing for the Catholic Other. Villette and Vale explore religious otherness and mediate sexual longing in mid-Victorian England.