Left by harrowing circumstances to fend for herself in the great capital of a foreign country, Lucy Snowe, the narrator and heroine of Villette, achieves by degrees an authentic independence from both outer necessity and inward grief. Charlotte Bronte’s last novel, published in 1853, has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, Jane Eyre, as well as a striking modernity of psychological insight, and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness.