‘Happiness is not a potato’: Plant-Thinking in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and The Professor

Abstract

This article explores the significance of plants and vegetal growth in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) and its earlier draft The Professor (1857). While the pensionnat garden is a memorable space in Villette, plants also figure as a model of thought for Brontë to explore growth, regeneration, and heterogeneity in her novel. Thinking about plants allows Brontë to explore contradictions between life and death, difference and conjunction, emotional nourishment and material vulnerability. In particular, the plant highlights the susceptibility of life-forms to external conditions, at a time when Brontë was mourning the deaths of her brother and sisters. Through reading Villette alongside Michael Marder’s philosophical book Plant-Thinking (2013), this article traces how the plant allowed Brontë to imagine inner growth during a particularly lonely period.