The Penguin English Library Edition of Villette by Charlotte Brontë

'That evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol - blind, bloodless, and of granite core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they were'

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' board ...