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Charlotte Brontë’S Villette, Mid-Victorian Anti-Catholicism, And The Turn To Secularism, Michael M. Clarke

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) is frequently interpreted as anti-Catholic, reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant plays a pivotal role in the novel, as Lucy Snowe’s perspective evolves from narrow sectarianism to a more open stance. Brontë accomplishes this reconciliation by elucidating the differences at their deepest level: at the point where Protestantism challenges and ultimately evolves into a separate set of institutions from Catholicism. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, this paper argues that, in its advocacy of the possibility of deep faith combined with religious pluralism, Villette anticipates modern secularism in the best sense of the word.