English novelist and poet, the eldest of the Brontë sisters, shewrote Jane Eyre (1847) under the pen name of Currer Bell: shewas persuaded to reveal her identity by her publisher once the novel enjoyed huge, unexpected success sparking a movement in regards to feminismin literature.

1816: born in Thornton, Yorkshire, she wasthe third of six children. Her father was an Irish Anglican clergyman, vicar at St. Peter’ s Church at Harts-head. She would eventually base her novel Shirley on the area.

1820: the family moved a few miles to Haworth in the care ofElizabeth Branwell, their aunt, after Mrs. Brontë’s death(1821).

1824: Charlotte was sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School. Itspoor conditions permanently affected her health and physical

development and hastened the deaths of her two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth,

who died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Their father removed both Charlotte and Emily from the school . 2

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

CHARLOTTE BRONTËAt home she and the other surviving children(Branwell, talented but weak; Emily, whowould become famous for Wuthering Heights;Anne, author of the novel Agnes Grey) beganwriting elaborate sagas on the inhabitants of their imaginary kingdoms.

1831-32: Charlotte continued her education at

Roe Head, returning there as a teacher in 1835.

1839-41: she took up the first of many positions as governessto various families in Yorkshire but the sisters planned to open a school together, which their aunt agreed to finance.

1842: Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels as pupils to improve their qualifications in French and acquire some German. 3

CHARLOTTE BRONTËThe talent displayed by the two sistersbrought them to the notice of Constantin Héger, a fine teacher and a man of unusualperception: his strong and eccentricpersonality appealed both to her sense of humour and to her affections. She offered him an innocent but ardent devotion and became aware of her own great literary resources.

1844: Charlotte attempted to start the school that she had long envisaged. Prospectuses were issued, but no pupils were attracted to distant Haworth…

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CHARLOTTE BRONTË 1846: together Charlotte, Emily, and Anne

published a collection of poems under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold but the sisterscontinued writing for publication and began their first novels.

1847: she published Jane Eyre. It was an immediate success!

In the years which followed Branwell and Emily (1848) as well asAnne (1849) died: Charlotte was left alone with her aging father.

1848: attempting to cope with her grief she resumed writing

and her second novel, Shirley, was published in 1849.5

CHARLOTTE BRONTË 1853: her third novel, Villette, took inspiration from her own

experiences at the boarding school in Brussels.

1854: she married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate.The marriage was a very happy one and she became pregnantsoon after but her health declined rapidly.

1855: she died, along with her unborn child,at the age of 38, and was buried in the family vault in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels at Haworth.

Her novel The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, was published posthumously in 1857.

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JANE EYRE (1847)

Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the titlecharacter which goes through five distinct stages:

1. Jane’s childhood at Gateshead, where she isemotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins;

2. her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression;

3. her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester;

4.a period at Moor House with the Rivers family during whichher earnest but cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers acts as a spiritual guide, proposes to her and suggests a missionary life;

5. her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester. 7

THREE GENRES The novel merges three distinct genres:

❑ it has the form of a Bildungsroman, a story about a child’s maturation, focusing on the emotions and experiences that accompanygrowth to adulthood;

❑ it also contains much social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core;

❑ it has the brooding, moody quality and a mystery character typical of Gothic fiction.

It is considered a proto-feminist novelwhich portrays the evolution of a thinking, individualistic, passionate young woman, who desires a full life but is also highly moral and capable of making difficult choices. 8

RELIGION… God and religion are foremost in

the novel: Jane, an unconventionalheroine, independent and self-reliant,

❑ encounters different models of religion which she ultimately rejects as she forms her own ideas about faith and principle, and their practical consequences;

❑ endeavours to attain a balance between moral duty and earthlyhappiness honouring traditional morality and achieving a full self-knowledge and complete faith in God.

In her, religion acts to moderate her behaviour, notto repress her true self: her happiness will be complete only when atonement and forgiveness are attained. 9

… & LOVE. Love and passion are pivotal

themes: a life that is not livedpassionately is not lived fully.

❑ Real love (Jane + Rochester) will be rewarded.

❑ False loves (Bertha + Rochester, Blanche Ingram + Rochester, St. John Rivers + Jane) will simply not make it.

The novel is a plea for the recognition of the individual’s

worth: Jane demands to be treated as an independenthuman being, a person with her own needs and talents. 10

EQUALITY… Women and men should enjoy equal rights and be given

equal opportunities: this is what Jane/Charlotte believes.

“… Women feel just as men feel; they

need exercise for their faculties…

they suffer from too rigid a constraint

precisely as men would suffer… It is

thoughtless to condemn them,or laugh

at them, if they seek to do more than

custom has pronounced necessary

for their sex…” (ch. 12)

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… & FREEDOM.

… and when Jane, misinterpreting Rochester’s wedding plans, believes that she has to leave him for good she cries

“… I am not talking to you now throughthe medium of custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh: – it is my spiritthat addresses your spirit; just as if bothhad passed through the grave and westood at God’s feet, equal. – as we are!”

and later

“… I am a free human being with an independent will…” (ch. 23)

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LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT Jane Eyre had enormous success, so she

was persuaded by her publisher to visitLondon and reveal her true identity: shebegan to move in more exalted social circles, becoming friends with writers likeElizabeth Gaskell and W. M. Thackeray.

The novel sparked a movement in regards to feminism in literature: the main character was a parallel to her, a verystrong woman and yet this is how Charlotte was described by Anne Thackaray, the writer’s daughter, the night she met her…

“… a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair, and steady eyes… Every one waited for the brilliant conversation whichnever began at all. Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess… It was one of the dullest evenings… ever spent…”

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A CURIOSITY. She was so reserved that no authorial portrait was permitted

to circulate in the press or accompany her work: although she herself penned a ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’ in which she revealed the names behind the pseudonyms and performed the first public telling of her sisters’ lives, she preferred to “walk invisible” , as she put it in a letter to the literary editor W.S. Williams.

Nevertheless Charlotte too entered myth: after a first flurry of obituaries and memorials at her death, her story was told by Elizabeth Gaskell in what would become one of the 19th-century’s most famous biographies, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), whichtransformed its subject into an icon. 14

A SPECIAL LEGACY Notwithstanding Charlotte’s legacy

as a writer and as a woman, the Brontë family also claims a very special heritage: the BrontëSociety, one of the oldest literary societies in the world.

Founded in 1893, it is responsible for running the Brontë Parsonage Museum in the picturesque village of Haworth in West Yorkshire, once the home of the family, and also for promoting the Brontës’ literary legacy within contemporary society.

It has been particularly active in this last decade celebrating the bicentenaries of Charlotte Brontë in 2016, Branwell Brontë in 2017, Emily Brontë in 2018 and Anne Brontë in 2020.

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