Tempest-Tossed: Storm Imagery in Villette and Frankenstein

"These strange accents in the storm -- this restless, hopeless cry -- denote a coming state of the atmosphere unpropitious to life." (Bronté, p. 46)

"This almost miraculous change of inclination and will was... the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me." (Shelley, p. 41)

The Romantic and Victorian periods saw a flowering of imagery: for the Romantics, because it often proved the best way to express their vague philosophical yearnings and ideas; for the Victorians, because societal taboos all too often prevented discussion of topics unless they were "coded" in acceptable images. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charlotte Brontké's Villette, despite springing from these two different periods of literature, share a type of symbol. In each "bildingsroman," storms provide a dominant textual metaphor for violent and confusing turning points in the main character's development. For Lucy Snowe, storms usher her along in her development from shy, frigid nursemaid to more open, self-sufficient school-mistress: though fearful and traumatic, the storms, and experiences, tend to mold and enhance her personality. But for Victor Frankenstein, storms punctuate his relationship with his horrid creation, and show his steady dissolution towards tragedy and attempted revenge.

Villette practically opens with a storm: after the initial exposition, Lucy tells of how "it was a wet night; the rain lashed the panes, and the wind sounded angry and restless" on the evening when Polly Home first arrived. This admittedly minor change in her life still presages, in its stormy accompaniment, the larger turning-points in her life that storms are to indicate. Indeed, Lucy's stay with Polly and the Brettons is immediately followed by her famous and unexplained "shipwreck" image that begins Chapter IV. Whether it represents forced incest or merely financial reversals and deaths in the family, it is this storm which produces much of the cool reserve and surfeit of reason that troubles Lucy through the rest of the novel. Moreover, the tempest and shipwreck force her out into nursing duty for Miss Maria Marchmont.

Lucy's nursing service culminates in yet another storm, a ferocious spring hurricane in whose eye Miss Marchmont passes away -- but not before telling of the snow-filled night (a storm's aftermath) which took her betrothed husband from her. The storm lends extra significance to the tale, which foretells Lucy's own, parallel loss of M. Paul Emanuel in the storm at the end of the novel, and her subsequent, Marchmont-esque life of resigned stoicism. Miss Marchmont dies, of inner and outer storm, and both these thus drive Lucy on to the next phase of her education: her journey (storm-filled in turn) to the disguised Belgium of "Villette" and Madame Beck's establishment.

The "Pensionnat Beck" is a place of both metaphoric and literal storms, and all herald Lucy into new experiences, new developments. Her first attempt at teaching English "threatened stormy weather" (p. 97) but, Neptune-like, she disperses it. A mighty "sort of hurricane" reduces the school's Catholics to abject prayer, but Lucy "is roused and obliged to live," and longs "for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me upwards and onwards." (p. 134) She quells this desire, but it takes its revenge in the form of M. Paul, the "species of whirlwind" (p. 166), "like a bottled storm" (p. 190), who drives her to acting and education. Again Lucy resists, persisting alone in the Pensionnat during the long vacation: and there she is visited with inner and outer storms. Tempestuous weather unites with deep depression and "Hypochondria" to send her to Pere Silas and the unconsciousness that thunderously ends Volume I -- and allows her to re-open acquaintance with Graham/Dr. John and, ultimately, Polly/Miss de Bassompierre.

This thicket of examples from Volume I should adequately demonstrate the major role storms play in marking and inducing Lucy's development, but the later portions also contain relevant and significant examples. Mrs. Bretton's stately, ship-like progress prompts Lucy to speak of herself as a "lifeboat, which most days of the year lies dry... only putting to sea... in rough weather." (p. 226) Were it not obvious before, here most readily appears Lucy's utter resistance to change unless driven to it by storm and tempest. A storm welcomes Lucy back to the Pensionnat and her changed impressions, as does M. Paul, again moving "like a clap of thunder." (p. 298) Lucy's reintroduction to Polly takes place in a "white tempest" of snow, which serves the additional purpose for the plot of throwing Polly and Graham together.

Volume III is relatively free of ill weather, perhaps reflecting that Lucy has accomplished much of her storm-fostered development already, through the Brettons and de Bassompierres. Remaining is a modified marriage-plot with the already-stormy M. Paul Emanuel, still characterized by a "gathering storm" of anger (p. 407) or "a flash of sheet lightning in the shape of a single bantering smile from his eyes" (p. 476). The tempest surrounding the spectral house of Madame "Malevola" Walravens is appropriate in terms of its Gothic setting, its perspective on the stormy M. Paul and his history (and the stormy inner contradictions of his growing love for a Protestant), and the turning point it produces through educating Lucy about the real nature of her mysterious literature professor. All seems well, but for the final storm of the novel, which overcomes even the formidable M. Paul.

Storms in Charlotte Brontké's Villette are not in all senses the fearsome things the heroine makes them out to be. Though stressful, they are occasions for growth, the steps of the "bildingsroman." Each spell of ill weather, in the heavens, in her students' eyes, or in M. Paul's behavior, proves not a destructive catastrophe, but a useful impetus towards constructive change. Mary Shelley's shorter novel Frankenstein contains much potent storm imagery as well, but with a very different bent: each episode of uproar is not an occasion for growth, but for decay. Tempests mark turning points, but Victor Frankenstein's lead him in the opposite direction from Lucy Snowe's: towards dissolution and death.

Victor Frankenstein describes a thunderstorm in his youth which "shattered in a singular manner" and "utterly destroyed" (p. 40) an oak tree near his house. This storm, so different from the one that heralded Polly's arrival in Villette, indicates the more destructive nature storms are to have in Shelley's novel. The demonstration paradoxically drives young Victor away from "natural history" and towards mathematics, but it seems probable that interest in and research into electricity play so me part in his discovery of the "spark of life" that produces his monster. Interestingly, Shelley's original draft of her novel began with the present Chapter 5, in which Victor animates his creation while "rain pattered dismally against the panes" (p. 56): his creation is born amidst storm, and seems characterized by that weather throughout the rest of the book, associated with dread and destruction.

As Frankenstein returns home, grieving over his murdered brother William, the lightning from a violent rainstorm reveals the monster running past him and ascending a nearby mountain. It is then that Victor realizes his creation is the cause of his brother's death. Victor describes the tempest in glowing, poetic terms: "lightnings playing on the summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures," the lake appears as "a vast sheet of fire." In short, it is "beautiful yet terrific." (p. 73) The appearance of the monster provides a sudden, horrid contrast -- but also associates the creature with Romantic Nature, giving a clue which its later narrative confirms about its thwarted Rousseau-like existence. Indeed, the monster's own first decision to turn against humanity takes place against the background of a storm: as it burns the De Lacey's cottage, "a fierce wind arose... the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits." (p. 132) Nature, violated by Frankenstein's experiments, seems to assist in exciting his creation against him.

Storms and foul weather follow Victor as each of his closest family and friends are stripped from him. "The strong north wind that had arisen during the night" (p. 168) drives him to shore and into suspicion for the murder of his good friend Henry Clerval. On Victor's wedding night, before the murder of Elizabeth, "the wind... rose with great violence in the west.... Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended." (p. 185) Frankenstein's creation's elemental association appears more clearly when he fires his pistol at it, but "he eluded me..., running with the swiftness of lightning." (p. 187) Even as Victor determines on his own revenge while standing at the graves of his family, "everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which were gently agitated by the wind." (p. 192) Each step of Victor's destruction and growing monomania, Lear-like, is accompanied by storms.

Even Victor's end meets with stormy accompaniment. He pursues his creation across an Arctic wasteland where already, says Robert Walton, "the winter has been dreadfully severe" (p. 20) and, even as he approaches his foe, "the wind arose; the sea roared." (p. 198) The breakup of the ice denies Victor his long-sought revenge and saps his health, leaving him to die on board Walton's ship. His creature, appearing for one last apostrophe, claims remorse and plans that its "ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds." (p. 211) A creature of storm, it will join with cold and fierce winds even in death.

Both Charlotte Brontké's Villette and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are "bildingsroman," novels of character history and development, and in each, storms accompany the critical moments of the characters' lives. Yet Brontké's novel uses storms as harsh purgatives, sharp spurs to drive Lucy Snowe forward in her evolution. Shelley's work, on the other hand, casts storms as symbols of unleashed madness and destruction, heralding the gradual reduction of her hero to the lifeless husk of the finale. But, despite their different directions of movement, both Snowe and Frankenstein bear their progress and fates stoically. Perhaps they might join Macbeth, on his blasted heath, with (V.v.50-51)

"Blow wind, come wrack:
At least we'll die with harness on our back."