‘I never asked to be made learned’: Happy Reading and Pathological Interpretation in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The Victorian tendency to pathologise allegedly unproductive pleasure reading was due to the hermeneutic hierarchy that underpins the rise of twentieth-century bibliotherapy, a medical approach to prescribing books to patients. Despite its psychopathological benefits, Victorian pleasure reading was denounced as intellectual idleness. Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) captures the historical shift in the concept of happy reading, which fluctuates from a pathological object of correction and betterment to the independent projection of knowledge. This article explores how positive feelings contributed to Brontë’s imagination of reading practices even before the term bibliotherapy was coined. The protagonist, Lucy Snowe, represents a non-normative reader who advocates reading for pleasure, thereby challenging the social construction of intellectual disability. Brontë’s novel thus illustrates the tension between professional intellectuals, who pathologise leisure reading, and Lucy, who resists the ruse of productivity and overturns the marriage plot to secure, at least partially, her reading habit for happiness.