title: "A great break in the common course of confession": narrating loss in Charlotte Brontë's Villette.
abstract: This essay suggests that a complex understanding of trauma can significantly explain both the narrative structure and the subject matter of Charlotte Brontë's Villette. The narrative structures attendant on traumatic experience provide a model for understanding Lucy Snowe's silences, repetitions, and evasions in a way that moves past the longstanding critical dichotomy that casts them as either an indication of oppression or a strategy for empowerment and instead explores how they both represent and enact a model of communication that seeks to render accessible experiences and perspectives generally marginalized in both Brontë's contemporary culture and the traditional realist novel.
authors.forename: Gretchen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Braun
mesh_terms: D049671:History, 18th Century; D007398:Interpersonal Relations / Q000266:history; D008016:Life Change Events / Q000266:history; D008091:Literature / Q000266:history; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012919:Social Behavior / Q000266:history; D012934:Social Isolation / Q000523:psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000208:ethnology; D016387:Women's Health / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history