I was thinking lately about death in conjunction with Villette. Lucy Snowe is attached to her dead loved ones and memories of them keep her alive while she seems "dead" to the world around her. Even at the end of Villette, death is powerful for her. When M.Paul dies, she will once again have him entirely for herself and love him the way she loved her beloved dead, something she cannot fully do in real life because she is afraid of being hurt, since the living always have the power to hurt her, emotionally or otherwise. The dead loving her also gives her a powerful imagination.

But..I wonder how useful this is for suriving in this world. A friend of mine told me that there was no use in pondering about the larger questions of life and getting depressed when you can't find the answers because the whole point was to surivive in this world no matter how stale it is. But we must find comfort somewhere. If that friend can get comfort from her work or her studies, and that keeps her away from thinking about these "larger" questions, then so be it, good for her. But if some people cannot help thinking about these questions, then one way for them to cope is to find happiness in the dead. The beloved dead can love and cannot hurt you. But if you think about that, Lucy's way of coping with the world is distancing herself from the living for fear of being hurt (not that the people around her(except M.Paul) were worthy of her love) and how useful would this have been for her to keep "living"? That's why I think M.Paul's dying was actually a good thing for Lucy because she will always have more to imagine, and imagination keeps her alive. But I still wonder...Will she ever lose her sense of imagination? If she does, what will become of her? How else will she be happy if the world disappoints her too?