Villette Ch. 22: The Letter and the Nun

Charlotte Brontë

The Letter and the Nun

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Summary

Lucy waits until the house is still, Madame Beck settled with her mother and friends, then begs a candle from the kitchen. Ginevra is in the dormitory, awake and ready to talk. The classrooms are being scrubbed. The only quiet left is the cold garret, so Lucy climbs, breaks the seal, and reads.

Dr John's letter is long and kind. It goes back over what they have shared, and the warmth of it gives her a happiness she almost does not trust. She is still inside that joy when a figure in black and white, head veiled, comes out of the dark. She runs downstairs with the letter and into the salle-à-manger. Madame, Madame Kint, M. Victor Kint, and a man with his back to the door all turn. She is pale and shaking, and she tells them to look.

The man is Dr John. He takes the letter back into his own keeping. Her relief is so plain she can hardly speak. He calls the nun a spectral illusion, the fruit of a long strain, and tells her not to describe it. Madame praises her for bringing the tale to the private room instead of the refectory. The subject drops. Lucy is left asking, with nobody to answer, whether the shape belonged to this world, to something past the grave, or only to the illness that had her in its hands.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Name the fear before you hide it

A private joy can turn frightening so fast that the first impulse is to carry it into a room full of people. Lucy is still holding Dr John's letter when a veiled figure in black and white comes out of the garret dark, and she runs with the story into Madame Beck's salle-à-manger.

The next time a good thing and a fright arrive together, tell one trusted person what you saw before you decide you imagined it.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Dr John

He takes the letter back into his own keeping and calls the nun a spectral illusion. The joy she climbed to the garret to read, and the fright that drove her downstairs, both end in his hands. He can be kind and still decide what her eyes are allowed to have seen.

Continue this thoughtThe Narrator Keeps Secrets She Has Already Spent

Coming Up in Chapter 23

Sadness does not stay. A new influence begins to work on Lucy, and Dr John means to take her out. Before she can go she must fetch her grey crape from the attic wardrobe, and the grenier door is the same door she opened on the night of the nun.

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Original text

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Chapter 22

The Letter and the Nun

THE LETTER. When all was still in the house; when dinner was over and the noisy recreation-hour past; when darkness had set in, and the quiet lamp of study was lit in the refectory; when the externes were gone home, the clashing door and clamorous bell hushed for the evening; when Madame was safely settled in the salle-à-manger in company with her mother and some friends; I then glided to the kitchen, begged a bougie for one half-hour for a particular occasion, found acceptance of my petition at the hands of my friend Goton, who answered, “Mais certainement, chou-chou, vous…

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The Letter and the Nun

Summary

Why This Matters