Charlotte Brontë

Review of Villette (by Anne Mozely)

from Unsigned Review, <em>Christian Remembrancer</em>, pp. 401-53.

Reflecting upon this extraordinary moral perversity, the English teacher [Lucy Snowe in Villette] once ventured to remonstrate, and to express her views on the relative depravity of the two sins – a lie, or an occasional omission in church-going....We are not at all proud of her as a representative of our reformed faith; and believe there might be much better reason for this than she would be willing to allow. We own we should be sorry to subject any child of ours to the teaching and insinuations of the mind here pictured; whose religion is without awe, - who despises and sets down every form and distinction she cannot understand – who rejects all guides but her Bible, and at the same time constantly quotes and plays with its sacred pages, as though they had been given to the world for no better purpose than to point a witticism or furnish an ingenuous illustration.

First published April, 1843

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