Was any prospective teacher ever interviewed like Lucy Snowe?

As our heroine has no previous experience, no references and no French, Mme Beck calls in her cousin, M Paul, an expert in female physiognomy, to stare at her.

And his verdict?

“She has good and bad in her face. Engage her if you’re desperate.”

So does Lucy turn out to be a good “English as a foreign language” teacher?

At first she has to overcome the antagonism of the titled girls at her Catholic boarding school in Belgium. “These are not quiet decorous English girls. They always throw over timid teachers,” Mme Beck warns her, adding helpfully that she will get no help from the staffroom. “That would set you down as incompetent.”

And does Miss Lucy overcome les biches?

Absolument! First she marches up to Blanche and tears up her devoir in front of the whole class, then she hurls Big Dolores into the book cupboard and locks the door, much to the amusement of all the other girls. Thereafter they begin to lay bouquets on Mademoiselle’s desk every matin.

But what does the headmistress say to all this?

“Ca bien” - she has been watching Lucy through a spy hole installed in the classroom door.

So is our heroine happy in her hard-won new job?

She likes the work well enough, although she does describe her class as a “swinish multitude who could not be driven by force” and her three colleagues in even less complimentary terms. “One I found to be an honest woman but a narrow thinker and an egoist. The second was a Parisienne, externally refined but at heart corrupt, while the third was a characterless and insignificant person in whom reigned only the love of money.

Sounds like life in the staff room was a gas.

And they all spy on Lucy too - after she makes the mistake of telling her class that falsehood is a worse sin than the occa- sional failure to attend church.

All heresies get reported back direct to Mine Beck.

I cannot believe there is a happy ending to this one.

Fortunately Villette is a 19th- century novel, which means that an unexpected benefactor inevitably arrives on the scene.

M Paul, in fact. He falls for Lucy in a big way and gives her the wherewithal to start her own school, free from “swinish herds” and venal colleagues.

If only life were like that.

This is fantasy.

Adrian Mourby