A Deconstructive Analysis of BronteÆs Villette
In Villette, Charlotte Bronte (2001) exploits the confusion between appearance and reality, and the difficulty that its characters, especially Lucy, have in recognizing both the self and others, in order to encode a strategy for denouncing what Cocci (2003) characterizes as the terrible falsity of the social code and the difficulties a woman meets when she tries to see not only others but herself as she really is. Deconstructive analysis, as proposed first by Jacques Derrida, asks that an analyst literally strip away the multiple layers of meaning contained in a text to identify alternative explanations and meanings, some of which may have been planned by the creator or authorial voice, and others of which emerge from the perspective of each successive generation of readers (Boone, 1992).
As Boone (1992) commented vis-a-vis this novel, there are several levels on which the text and its characters can be analyzed. Among those are the issues of seeing and invisibility, or surveillance and disappearance from view. Given the brevity of the report, reference to several of the many approaches to the novel and its meaning will be made to illustrate the range of deconstructed analyses that have been undertaken.
Boone (1992) believes that Lucy, as a narrator-heroine, is the observer who spies on others and is imprisoned in societal, emotional chains. Bronte (2001) therefore may have written Lucy as an archetype of the middle-class genteel woman of her era û a woman forced to earn her living and particularly lacking in the skills needs to do so or the opportunities that would make success possible. In such a view, LucyÆs tendency to externalize herself and to literally as well as figuratively ôspyö on others confers on her a peculiar power û her invisibility and her capacity to observe; however, she remains enclosed by what she is allowed to see.
Shaw (1994) also arg...