1. Refer to Gilbert and Gubar's chapter "The Queen's Looking Glass" for a more detailed analysis of the Freudian interpretations of the relationship between male writers and the phallocentric pen. 
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2. I am taking certain liberties in moving so fluidly between the narrative authority of Lucy and that of Charlotte Brontë, simply because I am looking at subversive narration as the combined effort of author and character, and not specifically the relationship between the two. 
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3. Patricia Johnson brought my attention to this example. Refer to page 617 in her essay "'This Heretic Narrative': The Strategy of the Split Narrative in Charlotte Brontë's Villette" for a discussion of these two letters. 
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4. Shortly after her arrival in Villette, Lucy refers to the "Fatherland accents" (76) of an English gentleman (Dr. John) who helps her with her luggage. 
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5. See Nina Auerbach's discussion of the actress and her association with the prostitute figure. in her book Romantic Imprisonment: Women and Other Glorified Outcasts. 
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6. In his critique of Shirley, Lewes wrote that: "It is true, no doubt, that none of them [women] have yet attainted to the highest eminence in the highest departments of intellect. They have had no Shakespeare, no Bacon, no Newton, no Milton, no Raphael, no Mozart, no Watt, no Burke" (160). Lewes then analyses the "domain" of literature and the inroads women have made there, asking us to "Compare Miss Austen, Miss Ferriar, and Miss Edgeworth, with the lusty mirth and riotous humour of Shakespeare, Rabelais, Butler, Swift, Fielding, Smollett, or Dickens and Thackeray. It is like comparing a quiet smile with the 'inextinguishable laughter' of the Homeric gods! So also on the stage, -- there have been comic actresses of incomparable merit, lively, pleasant, humourous women ... but they have no comic energy" (162). 
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7. This segment of dialogue mirrors Brontë's angry and hurt reaction to Lewes' review of Shirley. In a letter to Lewes, she writes: "I will tell you why I was so hurt by that review in the 'Edinburgh' - not because its criticism was keen or its blame sometimes severe; not because its praise was stinted ... but because I had said earnestly that I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman, [and] you so roughly - I even thought so cruelly - handled the question of sex" (Wise 68). 
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8. The original meeting occurs on page 78, but Lucy makes the connection during the exam: "Those two faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and whisker -- those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous visages -- were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full gas-light from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt morally certain, were the very heroes who had driven a friendless foreigner beyond her reckoning and her strength, chased her breathless over a whole quarter of the town" (504). 
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9. Robert Heilman actually counts the number of times Brontë personifies an abstraction in Villette. He reports "some seventy common nouns are made proper by type, and there are 130 instances of this. The words promoted three or four times are Reason, Fate, Hope, Imagination, Destiny, Disappointment, Death, and Truth; the two-time words are Providence, Common Sense, Time, Life, Feeling, Power, Freedom, Renovation, and Fancy. The long list of once-onlys includes the Real, Temptation, Inclination, True Love, Substance, Hypochondria, Fact, Pity, Comparison, Rumour, Hate, Conception, Falsehood, Heresy, and Creative Impulse" (246). Heilman's article is an interesting and detailed read and provides many insights into the diverse stylistic aspects of Villette. He refers to Lucy's use of puns (224), eighteenth-century syntax (225), and various other, quite complicated uses of alliteration and literary devices (235-242). I have not encountered any other critical essay that analyses Villette textually in such a unique and detailed manner; this is a must-read for anyone studying the narrative devices in Brontë's novel. 
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10. Jill Matus discusses the discrepancy between the Cleopatra in Villette, and the painting Brontë likely used as her prototype. Matus' essay includes some insightful details about Brontë's adaptation of De Biefve's painting, and she also includes photographs of the paintings in question. That Brontë alters the painting of an Egyptian slave girl may not only represent an artistic license, but it also makes a statement about the distortion that occurs when "real" women are depicted through art. 
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11. Jill Matus provided the connection to this line from Shakespeare. She also analyses the presence of several deadly sins in Brontë's Cleopatra painting, specifically, sloth, lust, and gluttony. These are the key points of contention in Lucy's criticisms of the painting (see her description on page 250). 
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12. Refer to Jill Matus' discussion of the relationship between Charlotte Brontë and John Martin. Also refer to Christine Alexander's article "'The Burning Clime:" Charlotte Brontë and John Martin." Alexander argues that the marginalized, nineteenth-century painter John Martin taught Brontë how to articulate passion or rebellion through a visual or a visually-oriented medium (320), and that the Academy's rejection of Martin may have influenced Brontë to moderate the passion in her writing. By shifting the focus from visual to textual, Brontë may have been attempting to modify, encode, or subvert some of the more rebellious or unacceptable themes in her writing. 
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13. See Anne Russell's "'History and Real Life': Anna Jameson, Shakspeare's Heroines and Victorian Women." for an assessment of Jameson's critical work. Jameson constructs a concept of womanliness that Russell refers to as "an innate and natural quality, which is by definition moral" (38), an extremely versatile definition that accommodates various interpretations of moral behaviour. Russell says that Jameson's book was extremely popular and clearly demonstrated the Victorian interest in examining and re-thinking the "textual" woman: who she was, what she represented, and possibly how she came to be there. 
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14. Dr. John blindly praises Ginevra in the earlier sections of the novel, specifically in "The Fête," and "We Quarrel," although she confides to Lucy that she finds him "bourgeois" (183), and a "plague" and a "bore" (184). It is not until Ginevra snubs his mother and himself at the concert that he realizes his mistake (272). 
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15. Dr. John "laughs till he shook" (396) when he overhears M. Paul's assessment of Lucy's wanton character (396). On two other occasions, the men provide similar, opposing views of Lucy's sensuality. At the museum, Dr. John seems unconcerned that Lucy's moral fibre might be compromised if she looks at the Cleopatra painting, whereas M. Paul lapses into one of his many diatribes against Lucy's "'Astounding, insular audacity!'" (251) Finally, the pink dress Lucy wears to the concert elicits similar responses: Dr. John dismisses her uncharacteristically colourful appearance with "a kind smile and satisfied nod" (260), while M. Paul lectures her on the intemperance of her "scarlet gown" (418). 
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16. In his book Victorian People and Ideas Richard Altick provides a concise overview of a middle-class education for Victorian boys, which involved extensive "[t]ranslating, parsing, imitating, and memorizing the works of Greek and Latin authors" (252). Also see pages 54-55 for his comments on the education of girls, which was conversely "limited to the polite accomplishments which were calculated to help her first to win a husband and then, after that primary goal was reached, to infuse her household with an air of the softer graces so as to maintain its separation from the gritty world of affairs" (54). 
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17. In the chapter titled "Hair" in her book Femininity, Susan Brownmiller presents the historical context behind the sexualization of women's hair. Regarding the dangerous, sexual threat of a woman's hair, Brownmiller writes that "[a] woman's act of unpinning and letting down a cascade of long hair is interpreted as a highly erotic gesture, a release of inhibiting restraints, a sign of sexual readiness which may be an enticement or a snare, a frightening danger or, in some cases, a possible salvation" (60). On the same page, Brownmiller notes the relationship between Eve's hair and temptation in Milton's "Paradise Lost," and she makes note of the significance of hair in the fairy-tale Rapunzel.
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