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English Literature Author: Charlotte Brontë
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by Julie Nash
University of Massachusetts
Lowell, Massachusetts
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Charlotte Brontë
1816-1855
British
Introduction
Charlotte Brontë, raised in a remote parsonage in the Yorkshire moors, was the eldest and most famous of the literary Brontë sisters. Her most acclaimed novel, Jane Eyre, tells the story of the passion between an orphaned governess and her powerful, sometimes brutal employer. This novel, published under the androgynous pseudonym Currer Bell, was an instant sensation in England, but Brontë's writing "career" began long before Jane Eyre's publication in 1847. The four surviving children of Patrick and Maria Brontë wrote copiously during their childhood, inventing the exotic fantasy worlds of Great Glasstown, Angria, and Gondol.
Influenced by the larger-than-life characters and settings of gothic novels, these early writings gave Charlotte Brontë and her literary sisters Emily and Anne the opportunity to develop their talents long before any of them attempted publication. After a failed attempt to sell a volume of their poetry, the Brontë
sisters each published a novel within a year. Jane Eyre blended exotic gothic elements with realistic details of poverty and hard work and became critically and commercially successful, as did her two later novels, Shirley (1849), which focused on the Luddite rebellions against textile machines, and Villette (1857), about a lonely boarding school teacher in Brussels. Her first novel, The Professor (1857), was published posthumously.
Brontë's literary success was accompanied by personal loss, however, as her three siblings died of consumption in 1848-1849. Despite her grief and the relative isolation of Haworth, her Yorkshire home, Brontë occasionally traveled to London, where she was treated as a celebrity by her publishers and by other authors. A friendship with the prominent novelist Elizabeth Gaskell would result in one of the best literary biographies of the nineteenth century, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). Gaskell's descriptions of the Yorkshire moors, the children's hardships at boarding school, and the eccentricities of Charlotte's father, Patrick Brontë, began the process of mythologizing this remarkable family. Brontë found happiness in her 1854 marriage to the Haworth curate Arthur Bell Nichols, a happiness that was cut short by her death the following year of pregnancy complications.
Major Works
- Jane Eyre (1847)
- Shirley (1849)
- Villette (1853)
- The Professor (1857)
Chronology
1816
Charlotte Brontë born to the Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë in Thornton, Lancashire, England, the third of six children: Maria (b. 1813), Elizabeth (b. 1815), Charlotte (b. 1816), Patrick Branwell (b. 1817), Emily Jane (b. 1818), and Anne (b. 1820).
1820
The Brontë family moves to Haworth parish in Yorkshire. Its nearby moors would serve as inspiration for (and feature prominently in) the writings of the Brontë authors.
1824
Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë are sent to live at the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. Maria and Elizabeth contract tuberculosis and die at home the following year. Charlotte Brontë would later depict the harsh conditions at Cowan Bridge in Jane Eyre's Lowood school.
1825
Patrick Brontë brings Charlotte and Emily Brontë home from school. The four surviving siblings spend their time playing on the moors, taking care of their pets, doing housework, reading, and writing.
1835-38
Charlotte Brontë becomes a teacher at Roe Head. Emily and later Anne would become students at the school, which moves to Dewsbury Moor in 1837.
1841
Charlotte Brontë becomes a governess with the White family in Leeds.
1842
Charlotte and Emily Brontë attend the Pensionnat Hegers in Brussels in the hopes of attaining enough education to open a school at Haworth.
1843
Charlotte Brontë begins teaching and studying English in Brussels.
1844
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne attempt to start a school.
1846
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell is published.
1847
Jane Eyre is published (along with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey later that year).
1848
Branwell and Emily Brontë die of tuberculosis.
1849
Anne Brontë dies of tuberculosis. Charlotte Brontë publishes Shirley.
1850
Charlotte Brontë meets and befriends writer Elizabeth Gaskell who would become her first biographer.
1853
Charlotte Brontë publishes Villette, her last novel.
1854
Brontë marries Haworth curate Arthur Bell Nichols.
1855
Brontë dies of pregnancy complications.
Julie Nash has a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Connecticut and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. She is the co-editor of The Literary Art of Anne Bronte (Ashgate, 2001).
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