Summary of "Outlandish Nationalism: Villette"

In the chapter “Outlandish Nationalism: Villette” from Disorienting Fiction: the Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels, James Buzard touches on many ideas of immersing into an alien land as a Briton and how the novel deals with the complications that can arise. He starts out by claiming that arrival scenes are important to generating the idea of otherness. In the first moments of her arrival, Lucy is bombarded with the differences between where she is and England. Creating this duality from the start allows the novel to explore the tensions and differences between being English and being from the Continent. However, becoming aware of her Englishness doesn’t come from standing aloof from her Labassecourian counterparts. Instead, “growing understanding of them tends to confirm and activate British Protestant values” (Buzard 247). Lucy understands that Britishness is a culture and not how everybody should live. Being aware of this helps her realize the behavior that British people ought to live up to in order to define themselves as Britons. Buzard claims that there are two different types of licenses that create conflict in Villette. The first is the license of unrestraint, which is negative, and the second is of diplomatic immunity, which “shields the emissary from the laws of the foreign country in which he resides” (250). In order to obtain the second license, Britons would have to restrict the first license. The next move that Buzard makes is to claim that Villette cannot be simply read in an ethnographic manner. The reason for this is that Bronte sets up London to be as alienating as Labassecour. Lucy cannot find a home in Britain which embodies the same type of Britishness as she does. The only way to form a British identity is to leave Britain and live in “an imperial project that is not Britain’s” (253). Departure and displacement become necessary to create a vital national identity. It is in a foreign land that Bretton’s heart has “come to glow with English fire as well as his hearth” (261). He and Polly suggest that Britons embody their national identities while having to embody the local identity as well. This strengthens the idea of national identity within them. However, Lucy recognizes that cultural identity can only be created and maintained through the act of playing some sort of role. They have to act “British” or act “French,” act “Protestant” or act “Catholic” whatever those codes my be. There is no permanent state, but everything is “open to negotiation and alteration” (267). Everything little thing has significance to how culture is created which is why, Buzard notices, that the novel charges even the trivial details with importance. This allows the reader to see the Labassecourian culture as a separate entity, locally contained. 

Buzard equates John Graham Bretton with Great Britain and Polly Home with the figurative “home” of the British. Polly becomes the emblem of the home that can be found in all countries because Britishness can be universally applicable. John Bretton embodies the English born who uphold British standards without succumbing to French or Catholic influences. His decision to marry Polly rather than her cousin Ginevra Fanshawa demonstrates Bretton’s Saxon strengths while highlighting Ginevra’s lack of British identity. Buzard comments that Lucy was given the chance to fall into this story of British identity. She had feeling for Bretton, but rather than fall for the embodiment of Britain, Lucy suppresses her feelings. Buzard believes that this is because Lucy must move past the National tale that Graham and Polly embody in order to push the boundaries of British identity to “assume the form of ‘another culture’” to bring back a British culture “that is theirs” (276). This is what Buzard ultimately believes is the purpose of Villette.