Abstract
This article examines the marriage sub-plots in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (especially the sub-plot concerning Paulina Home’s parents) to argue that they operate as an indicator of the forms of female rebellion the novel is prepared to endorse. Marriage plotting and sub-plotting in Villette have gone unnoticed by critics for the way they problematize ideas about women’s freedom and acceptable feminine behaviour. In Villette’s economy of female worth, only a specific type of woman is allowed to rebel, the woman who is also unconventional in appearance. Women with the conventional feminine appearance are lauded if they comply, and condemned if they do not. Marriage plotting and sub-plotting in Villette reveal the insidious way(s) in which stories between women are used in order to achieve female discipline.
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