The Cypher: Disclosure and Reticence in Villette

Abstract

c7J Tkills me to be forgotten, monsieur, Lucy Snowe tells M. Paul near the end of Villette.' Through much of the novel, however, Lucy cultivates the oblivion she here resists. Unobserved I could observe, she tells us early on (p. 198). Lucy's first words in the novel are: Of what are these things the signs and tokens? (p. 7); indeed, she seems first and foremost a decoder of signs, an interpreter of other people and events. One can say that Lucy's development is marked by an increasing desire to signify, to mean something to someone. And yet this notion of development as an increasing desire to signify is problematic, as is the idea, central to some feminist readings of Lucy, that Lucy's development is measured by her willingness to play a central role in her own story and to abandon her status as pure observer.2 For throughout Lucy's story (the