Fantasies of National Identification in Villette.

A literary criticism is presented for the novel "Villette" by Charlotte Brontë. The heroine is an Englishwoman teaching English on the European Continent at a school based on Continental norms and the Roman Catholic church. She initially denounces the Continental way of life as duplicitous and enslaving against the English model of liberty, openness and fair play. Her ideas change. The article notes that national identifications themselves are products of imagination subject to change.