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Lucy Stowe's Journey When Lucy Stowe boards a ship to travel to Villette, she is asked "Are you fond of a sea-voyage" by (the yet to be known) Ms. Fanshaw. Since this was Lucy's first trip abroad, she answers that her fondness is yet to be experienced. Nonetheless, Lucy's partiality for the sea is evident throughout the novel. She illustrates her past with a myriad of nautical metaphors and imageries of water that suggests a …

…for Ms. Beck when she says that she moves "like a ship dreading breakers" (407). The sea and its uncertain placidness or volatility is analogous to Lucy's view of the world. She is either safe from "the fiercest breakers" in the home of Dr. John, or is exposed to the uncertain, "stormy" dangers of independence which brings "briny waves" in her throat, or her romantic contentedness is "a sea breaking into song with all its waves".