It is Chapter Nine that you will want to re-read, when we
are given a full analysis of this French lady who runs the house where Lucy Snowe is
staying. She seems to be quite a ferocious lady in many aspects, and rules her house
through "espionage," because she believes that close surveillance is what her charges
need to prevent their ruin. Even though Lucy is critical of this belief and of Madame
Beck's constant spying, it is clear she holds this character in great esteem. Note her
concluding comments about her:
I say again, Madame was a very great and a very
capable woman. That school offered her for her powers too limited a sphere; she ought to
have swayed a nation: she should have been the leader of a turbulent legislative
assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated her nerves, exhausted her
patience, or over-reached her astuteness. In her own single person, she could have
comprised the duties of a first minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, fir,
faithfless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; actue and
insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be
desired?
So, in spite of the
rather close scrutiny that she keeps the women that stay with her under, Lucy Snowe is
able to look beyond this characteristic to see the depth of character beneath and to see
her as being a very strong woman capable of many things.
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