After an unspecified family disaster, Lucy Snowe travels to the city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance.
Lucy Snowe is a twenty-three year old self-reliant, quiet, intelligent young lady; she has 'no attractive accomplishments – no beauty,' and no relations. Though usually reserved and emotionally self-controlled, she has strong feelings and affections for those she really values, and even sincerely cares for the giddy Ginevra, albeit in a blunt curmudgeonly fashion.
The novel is celebrated not so much for its plot as its acute tracing of Lucy's psychology, particularly Brontë's use of Gothic doubling to represent externally what her protagonist is suffering internally.

Illustrated by F. H. Townsend