Baffled alike by the art galleries, the strict hierarchies of high society, and the enchanted atmosphere of the local carnival, Lucy Snowe must learn to define herself in opposition to her stony-faced landlady Madame Beck, the brittle egotist Ginevra Fanshawe and a series of possible suitors. Charlotte Bront?'s final novel about a shy, unworldly Englishwoman cast adrift in Europe with only schoolbook French brilliantly recreates her own younger self in Brussels in the 1840s.