Villette by Bronte

I am trying to be more educated, sophisticated, superior seeming, all to naught. I cannot for the life of me get past one page of the famous Charlotte Bronte's Villette (I had never even heard of it it to begin with, before spotting it on my sisters dresser). Each pretentious page opens up a snorefest one after the other, so many of her lines are actually written in French! There are no translations when certain characters speak it, how can you possibly read this type of book?

The main character is Lucy, whose view of things I must put up with as this is a first person driven story. And geez, is this girl so boring; she is a teacher in a girls school, and is of the rigid composture. But look at me, I am still trying to ploddle my way thru it, every morn, I try to pick my way thru at least 2 pages. Then I sleep for the next two hours. An hour a page.

Maybe some of it will go into my brain! And I shall be considered erudite, and sophisicated! WooHoo!

UPDATE!!:: Apparently, if you can make it past page 180 (yeah, there's like 540 somethingish pgs) the story is actually there, and not quite as bad as first thought. My perserverance paid off, my tugging myself thru 180 pages of doo dah came soon enough into storyland. Lucy Snowe, most amazingly not only developed a personality BUT I was finding myself quite empathetic to her. The story is pretty heart tugging, I did find myself skipping paragraphs of haphazard poetic descriptions though. Lucy is quiet, but not shy, itelligent but NOT 'smart', meaning she troubles her way thru things like math, she is stronger than the other women in most aspects but she is also wont to the feminine 'emotions' sometimes as well. Confusing?

I guess I empathized with her because she was heartwrenched at having no friends. It made her weak to be alone, people she admired did not look at her in any way other than 'something on the side'. When she did find a friend, that too was wrenched from her, it ends sadly, her with a happy outlook for the rest of her life, and it cruely smashed and ended. All the bad natured people around her happy and content, she left smashed.So wrong. Charlotte Brontes father asked her to write a happy ending for her story, she having wanted her 'ending' from the very beggining of writing the book, created a 'poetic' paragraph at the end. Telling readers to take whatever they wanted from it--though when you read it, it is quite, quite, obvious. I wished it was happy after all the heartache.........ah well!