In reassessing the representation of emotional distress in Charlotte Brontë's Villette, this article analyses the novel's reworking of epistolary elements. The seemingly 'preternatural' suspension of communication in the attic scene therein pinpoints three central elements: firstly, the nun's apparition embodies the invocation of outmoded literary forms. Secondly, the letter's displacement in a seemingly supernatural theft dramatizes the letter form's 'containment' in nineteenth-century fiction. As perhaps the most emotionally charged scene in the novel, Lucy Snowe's temporary loss of this letter simultaneously draws attention to a series of contrasting exchanges of letters that structure the novel. Their triangulation links the novel's plotlines together. That Paul Emmanuel's fulfilling correspondence is ultimately held in suspense constitutes the third element and final twist in the novel's thematization of a communication breakdown. Villette, I seek to argue, forms a particularly revealing example of Victorian fiction's experimentation with changing literary forms.