Charlotte Brontë

The English novelist Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) portrayed the struggle of the individual to maintain his integrity with a dramatic intensity entirely new to English fiction.

Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton in the West Riding of Yorkshire on April 21, 1816, the daughter of an Anglican minister. Except for a brief unhappy spell at a charity school, later portrayed in the grim and gloomy Lowood of the opening chapters of Jane Eyre, most of her early education was guided at home by her father.

After the early death of her mother, followed by that of the two older sisters, Brontë lived in relative isolation with her father, aunt, sisters Anne and Emily, and brother Branwell. The children created fantasy worlds whose doings they recorded in miniature script on tiny sheets of paper. Anne and Emily devised the essentially realistic kingdom of Gondal, while she and Branwell created the realm of Angria, which was dominated by the Duke of Zamorna. Zamorna's lawless passions and amorous conquests make up the greater part of her contributions. Created in the image of Byronic satanism, he was proud, disillusioned, and masterful. He ruled by strength of will and feeling and easily conquered women, who recognized the evil in him but were drawn into helpless subjection by their own passion.

This dreamworld of unrestricted titanic emotions possessed Brontë with a terrible intensity, and the conflict between it and the realities of her life caused her great suffering. Thus, although her life was outwardly placid, she had inner experience of the struggles of will with circumstance and of desire with conscience that are the subject of her novels. Her conscience was an exceptionally powerful monitor. During a year at a school in Brussels (1843/1844) she seems to have fallen in love with the married headmaster but never fully acknowledged the fact to herself.

Brontë's first novel was The Professor, based upon her Brussels experience. It was not published during her lifetime, but encouraged by the friendly criticism of one publisher she published Jane Eyre in 1847. It became the literary success of the year. Hiding at first behind the pseudonym Currer Bell, she was brought to reveal herself by the embarrassment caused by inaccurate speculation about her true identity. Of all Brontë's novels, Jane Eyre most clearly shows the traces of her earlier Angrian fantasies in the masterful Rochester with his mysterious ways and lurid past. But the governess, Jane, who loves him, does not surrender helplessly; instead she struggles to maintain her integrity between the opposing demands of passion and inhumanly ascetic religion.

Within 8 months during 1848/1849, Brontë's remaining two sisters and brother died. Despite her grief she managed to finish a new novel, Shirley (1849). Set in her native Yorkshire during the Luddite industrial riots of 1812, it uses social issues as a ground for a psychological study in which the bold and active heroine is contrasted with a friend who typifies a conventionally passive and emotional female. In her last completed novel, Villette (1853), Brontë again turned to the Brussels affair, treating it now more directly and with greater art. But in this bleak book the clear-sighted balance the heroine achieves after living through extremes of cold detachment and emotion is not rewarded by a rich fulfillment.

Despite her literary success Brontë continued to live a retired life at home in Yorkshire. She married a former curate of her father in 1854, but died within a year on March 31, 1855.

Further Reading

Still standard is Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (2 vols., 1857). Winifred Gérin, Charlotte Brontë (1967), is reliable and more complete. Robert B. Martin, The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Brontë's Novels (1966), is the only book-length critical study. □

Brontë, Charlotte (1816–55), daughter of Patrick Brontë, an Irishman, perpetual curate of Haworth, Yorkshire. Charlotte's mother died in 1821, leaving five daughters and a son, Branwell, to the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Four of the daughters were sent to a Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge (which Charlotte portrayed as Lowood in Jane Eyre), an unfortunate step which Charlotte believed to have hastened the death in 1825 of her two elder sisters and to have permanently impaired her own health. The surviving children pursued their education at home; they became involved in a rich fantasy life that owes much to their admiration of Byron, Sir W. Scott, the Arabian Nights and Tales of the Genii. They began to write stories, and Charlotte and Branwell collaborated in the elaborate invention of the imaginary kingdom of Angria, Emily and Anne in the invention of Gondal. In 1831–2 Charlotte was at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, whither she returned as a teacher in 1835–8. She was subsequently a governess and in 1842 she and Emily went to study languages at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels. Charlotte fell deeply in love with M. Heger, who failed to respond to the letters she wrote to him after her return to Haworth. In 1845 she ‘discovered’ (or so she alleged) the poems of Emily, and projected a joint publication; a volume of verse entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the pseudonyms of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) appeared in 1846. Charlotte's first novel, The Professor, never found a publisher in her lifetime, but Jane Eyre, published in 1847 by Smith, Elder, achieved immediate success, arousing much speculation about its authorship. To quell the suspicion that the Bell pseudonyms concealed but one author, Charlotte and Anne visited Smith, Elder in July 1848 and made themselves known.

She was not able to enjoy her success and a tragic period of her life followed. Branwell, whose wildness and intemperance had caused the sisters much distress, died in Sept. 1848, Emily in Dec. of that year, and Anne the following summer. Charlotte nevertheless persevered with the composition of Shirley (1849). The loneliness of her later years was alleviated by friendship with Mrs Gaskell, whom she met in 1850 and who was to write her biography (1857). Villette, founded on her memories of Brussels, appeared in 1853. Although her identity was by this time well known in the literary world, she continued to publish as Currer Bell. In 1854 she married her father's curate, A. B. Nicholls, but died a few months later of an illness probably associated with pregnancy. ‘Emma’, a fragment, was published in 1860 in the Cornhill Magazine with an introduction by Thackeray, and many of her juvenile works have subsequently been published, adding to our knowledge of the intense creativity of her early years. In her lifetime, Charlotte was the most admired of the Brontë sisters, although she came in for some criticism (which deeply wounded her) on the grounds of alleged ‘grossness’ and emotionalism, considered particularly unbecoming in a clergyman's daughter. More widespread was praise for her depth of feeling and her courageous realism.

Brontë, Charlotte (1816–55) English novelist and poet. Her personal life was unhappy and she persistently suffered from ill health. Born into genteel poverty, her mother, four sisters, and dissolute brother Branwell died early. Charlotte died in childbirth within a year of her marriage. Her four novels, The Professor (1846), Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853) are works of remarkable passion and imagination. Like her sisters Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, Charlotte's writings initially appeared under a male pseudonym (Currer Bell).