Charlotte Brontë

Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer Charlotte Nicholls (Template:Née; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), commonly known as Charlotte Brontë (Template:IPAc-en, commonly Template:IPAc-en),<ref>As given by Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature (Merriam-Webster, incorporated, Publishers: Springfield, Massachusetts, 1995), p. viii: "When our research shows that an author's pronunciation of his or her name differs from common usage, the author's pronunciation is listed first, and the descriptor commonly precedes the more familiar pronunciation." See also entries on Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, pp. 175–176.</ref> was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. Jane Eyre went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature.

Brontë enrolled in school at Roe Head, Mirfield, in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, then returned to Roe Head in 1835 as a teacher. In 1839, she undertook the role of governess for the Sidgwick family, but left after a few months. The three sisters attempted to open a school in Haworth but failed to attract pupils. Instead, they turned to writing; they each first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers, her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London literary circles.

Brontë was the last to die of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her wedding in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting.Template:Efn

Early years and education

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 in Market Street, Thornton (in a house now known as the Brontë Birthplace), west of Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the third of the six children of Maria (née Branwell) and Patrick Brontë (formerly surnamed Brunty), an Irish Anglican clergyman. In 1820 her family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth, on the edge of the moors, where her father had been appointed perpetual curate of St Michael and All Angels Church. Maria died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and a son, Branwell, to be taken care of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell.

In August 1824, Patrick sent Charlotte, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Charlotte maintained that the school's poor conditions permanently affected her health and physical development, and hastened the deaths of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who both died of tuberculosis in May (Maria) and June (Elizabeth) 1825. After the deaths of his older daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school.Template:Sfn Charlotte used the school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre, which is similarly affected by tuberculosis that is exacerbated by the poor conditions.

At home in Haworth Parsonage, Brontë acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Brontë wrote her first known poem at the age of 13 in 1829, and was to go on to write more than 200 poems in the course of her life.Template:Sfn Many of her poems were "published" in their homemade magazine Branwell's Blackwood's Magazine, and concerned the fictional world of Glass Town.Template:Sfn She and her surviving siblings – Branwell, Emily and Anne – created this shared world, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary kingdom in 1827.Template:Sfn<ref name="fr2">Template:Cite book</ref> Charlotte, in private letters, called Glass Town "her 'world below', a private escape where she could act out her desires and multiple identities".<ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref> Charlotte's "predilection for romantic settings, passionate relationships, and high society is at odds with Branwell's obsession with battles and politics and her young sisters' homely North Country realism, none the less at this stage there is still a sense of the writings as a family enterprise".<ref name=":9">Template:Cite journal</ref>

However, from 1831 onwards, Emily and Anne 'seceded' from the Glass Town Confederacy to create a 'spin-off' called Gondal, which included many of their poems.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After 1831, Charlotte and Branwell concentrated on an evolution of the Glass Town Confederacy called Angria.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Christine Alexander, a Brontë juvenilia historian,<ref name=":10">Template:Cite web</ref> wrote "both Charlotte and Branwell ensured the consistency of their imaginary world. When Branwell exuberantly kills off important characters in his manuscripts, Charlotte comes to the rescue and, in effect, resurrects them for the next stories [...]; and when Branwell becomes bored with his inventions, such as the Glass Town magazine he edits, Charlotte takes over his initiative and keeps the publication going for several more years".<ref name=":02">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Rp The sagas the siblings created were episodic and elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which have been published as juvenilia. They provided them with an obsessive interest during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for literary vocations in adulthood.Template:Sfn

File:Roe Head, Mirfield - geograph.org.uk - 55901.jpg

Roe Head School, in Mirfield

Between 1831 and 1832, Brontë continued her education at a boarding school twenty miles away in Mirfield, Roe Head (now part of Hollybank Special School<ref>Roe Head School (Bronte location) Template:Webarchive Retrieved 11 March 2023</ref>), where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.Template:Sfn In 1833 she wrote a novella, The Green Dwarf, using the name Wellesley. Around about 1833, her stories shifted from tales of the supernatural to more realistic stories.Template:Sfn She returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. Unhappy and lonely as a teacher at Roe Head, Brontë took out her sorrows in poetry, writing a series of melancholic poems.Template:Sfn In "We wove a Web in Childhood" written in December 1835, Brontë drew a sharp contrast between her miserable life as a teacher and the vivid imaginary worlds she and her siblings had created.Template:Sfn In another poem "Morning was its freshness still" written at the same time, Brontë wrote "Tis bitter sometimes to recall/Illusions once deemed fair".Template:Sfn Many of her poems concerned the imaginary world of Angria, often concerning Byronic heroes, and in December 1836 she wrote to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey asking him for encouragement of her career as a poet. Southey replied,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> famously, that "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation." This advice she respected but did not heed.

In 1839 Brontë took up the first of many positions as governess to families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841. In particular, from May to July 1839 she was employed by the Sidgwick family at their summer residence, Stone Gappe, in Lothersdale, where one of her charges was John Benson Sidgwick (1835–1927), an unruly child who on one occasion threw the Bible at Charlotte, an incident that may have been the inspiration for a part of the opening chapter of Jane Eyre in which John Reed throws a book at the young Jane.Template:Sfn Brontë did not enjoy her work as a governess, noting her employers treated her almost as a slave, constantly humiliating her.Template:Sfn She was of slight build and was less than Template:Convert tall.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Brussels and Haworth

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Plaque in Brussels, on the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels

In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Constantin Heger (1809–1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger (1804–1887). During her time in Brussels, Brontë, who favoured the Protestant ideal of an individual in direct contact with God, objected to the stern Catholicism of Madame Heger, which she considered a tyrannical religion that enforced conformity and submission to the Pope.Template:Sfn In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the school was cut short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the school. Her second stay was not happy: she was homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She returned to Haworth in January 1844 and used the time spent in Brussels as the inspiration for some of the events in The Professor and Villette.

After returning to Haworth, Charlotte and her sisters made headway with opening their own boarding school in the family home. It was advertised as "The Misses Brontë's Establishment for the Board and Education of a limited number of Young Ladies" and inquiries were made to prospective pupils and sources of funding. But none were attracted and in October 1844, the project was abandoned.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

First publication

In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne self-financed the publication of a joint collection of poems under their assumed names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The pseudonyms veiled the sisters' sex while preserving their initials; thus Charlotte was Currer Bell. "Bell" was the middle name of Haworth's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls whom Charlotte later married, and "Currer" was the surname of Frances Mary Richardson Currer who had funded their school (and maybe their father).<ref name=odnb>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Of the decision to use noms de plume, Charlotte wrote: Template:Blockquote Although only two copies of the collection of poems were sold, the sisters continued writing for publication and began their first novels, continuing to use their noms de plume when sending manuscripts to potential publishers.

The Professor and Jane Eyre

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File:Jane Eyre title page.jpg

Title page of the first edition of Jane Eyre

Brontë's first manuscript, 'The Professor', did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response from Smith, Elder & Co. of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works Currer Bell might wish to send.Template:Sfn Brontë responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August 1847. Six weeks later, Jane Eyre was published. It tells the story of a plain governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining Romanticism, naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective.Template:Sfn Brontë believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed the experience into a novel with universal appeal.Template:Sfn

Jane Eyre had immediate commercial success and initially received favourable reviews. G. H. Lewes wrote that it was "an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit", and declared that it consisted of "suspiria de profundis!" (sighs from the depths).Template:Sfn Speculation about the identity and gender of the mysterious Currer Bell heightened with the publication of Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily) and Agnes Grey by Acton Bell (Anne).Template:Sfn Accompanying the speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Brontë's work, as accusations were made that the writing was "coarse",Template:Sfn a judgement more readily made once it was suspected that Currer Bell was a woman.Template:Sfn However, sales of Jane Eyre continued to be strong and may even have increased as a result of the novel developing a reputation as an "improper" book.<ref>North American Review, October 1848, cited in The Brontës: The Critical Heritage by Allott, M. (ed.), Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974, cited in Miller (p18)</ref> A talented amateur artist, Brontë personally did the drawings for the second edition of Jane Eyre and in the summer of 1834 two of her paintings were shown at an exhibition by the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Leeds.Template:Sfn

Shirley and bereavements

In 1848 Brontë began work on the manuscript of her second novel, Shirley. It was only partially completed when the Brontë family suffered the deaths of three of its members within eight months. In September 1848 Branwell died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus, exacerbated by heavy drinking, although Brontë believed that his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell may have had a laudanum addiction. Emily became seriously ill shortly after his funeral and died of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848. Anne died of the same disease in May 1849. Brontë was unable to write at this time.

After Anne's death Brontë resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief,<ref>Letter from Charlotte to her publisher, 25 June 1849, from Template:Cite book cited in Template:Harvnb</ref> and Shirley, which deals with themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in society, was published in October 1849. Unlike Jane Eyre, which is written in the first person, Shirley is written in the third person and lacks the emotional immediacy of her first novel,Template:Sfn and reviewers found it less shocking. Brontë, as her late sister's heir, suppressed the republication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, an action which had a deleterious effect on Anne's popularity as a novelist and has remained controversial among the sisters' biographers ever since.<ref>The Novels of Anne Brontë. Template:Webarchive</ref>

In society

In view of the success of her novels, particularly Jane Eyre, Brontë was persuaded by her publisher to make occasional visits to London, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in more exalted social circles, becoming friends with Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriet Martineau whose sister Rachel had taught Gaskell's daughters.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Brontë sent an early copy of Shirley to Martineau whose home at Ambleside she visited. The two friends shared an interest in racial relations and the abolitionist movement; recurrent themes in their writings.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref> Brontë was also acquainted with William Makepeace Thackeray and G. H. Lewes. She never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time, as she did not want to leave her ageing father. Thackeray's daughter, writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, recalled a visit to her father by Brontë: Template:Blockquote Brontë's friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell, while not particularly close, was significant in that Gaskell wrote the first biography of Brontë after her death in 1855.

Villette

Brontë's third novel, the last published in her lifetime, was Villette, which appeared in 1853. Its main themes include isolation, how such a condition can be borne,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and the internal conflict brought about by social repression of individual desire.Template:Sfn Its main character, Lucy Snowe, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture and religion different from her own and falls in love with a man (Paul Emanuel) whom she cannot marry. Her experiences result in a breakdown but eventually, she achieves independence and fulfilment through running her own school. A substantial amount of the novel's dialogue is in the French language. Villette marked Brontë's return to writing from a first-person perspective (that of Lucy Snowe), the technique she had used in Jane Eyre. Another similarity to Jane Eyre lies in the use of aspects of her own life as inspiration for fictional events,Template:Sfn in particular her reworking of the time she spent at the pensionnat in Brussels. Villette was acknowledged by critics of the day as a potent and sophisticated piece of writing although it was criticised for "coarseness" and for not being suitably "feminine" in its portrayal of Lucy's desires.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Sfn

Marriage

File:CharlotteBronte.jpg

This photo-portrait of Ellen Nussey has long been mistaken for one of her friend Charlotte Brontë. The photo is a copy made Template:Circa by the photographer, Sir Emery Walker, from an original carte de visite photo which was then privately owned.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Before the publication of Villette, Brontë received an expected proposal of marriage from Irishman Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, who had long been in love with her.Template:Sfn She initially refused him and her father objected to the union at least partly because of Nicholls's poor financial status. Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed that marriage provided "clear and defined duties" that were beneficial for a woman,Template:Sfn encouraged Brontë to consider the positive aspects of such a union and tried to use her contacts to engineer an improvement in Nicholls's finances. According to James Pope-Hennessy in The Flight of Youth, it was the generosity of Richard Monckton Milnes that made the marriage possible. Brontë, meanwhile, was increasingly attracted to Nicholls and by January 1854, she had accepted his proposal. They gained the approval of her father by April and married on 29 June.Template:Sfn Her father Patrick had intended to give Charlotte away, but at the last minute decided he could not, and Charlotte had to make her way to the church without him.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Because her father did not attend it was Miss Wooler (Charlotte's former teacher at Roe Head School, and life-long friend), as "friend", who "gave away" Charlotte (Gaskell: Vol II, Chap XIII). The married couple took their honeymoon in Banagher, County Offaly, Ireland.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> By all accounts, her marriage was a success and Brontë found herself very happy in a way that was new to her.Template:Sfn

Death

File:Emily Brontë and Charlotte Brontë resting place.jpg

Brass plaque on family vault of Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë at St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth

Brontë became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly and, according to Gaskell, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, three weeks before her 39th birthday. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but biographers including Claire Harman and others suggest that she died from dehydration and malnourishment due to vomiting caused by severe morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Brontë was buried in the family vault in the Church of St Michael and All Angels at Haworth.

The Professor, the first novel Brontë had written, was published posthumously in 1857. The fragment of a new novel she had been writing in her last years has been twice completed by recent authors, the more famous version being Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Brontë by Clare Boylan in 2003. Most of her writings about the imaginary country Angria have also been published since her death. In 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary for her.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Cbignore</ref>

Religion

The daughter of an Irish Anglican clergyman, Brontë was herself an Anglican. In a letter to her publisher, she claims to "love the Church of England. Her Ministers indeed, I do not regard as infallible personages, I have seen too much of them for that – but to the Establishment, with all her faults – the profane Athanasian Creed excluded – I am sincerely attached."<ref name="Griesinger">Template:Cite journal</ref>

In a letter to Ellen Nussey she wrote: Template:Blockquote

The Life of Charlotte Brontë

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Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857. It was an important step for a leading female novelist to write a biography of another,Template:Sfn and Gaskell's approach was unusual in that, rather than analysing her subject's achievements, she concentrated on private details of Brontë's life, emphasising those aspects that countered the accusations of "coarseness" that had been levelled at her writing.Template:Sfn The biography is frank in places, but omits details of Brontë's love for Constantin Heger, a married man, as being too much of an affront to contemporary morals and a likely source of distress to Brontë's father, widower, and friends.Template:Sfn Mrs. Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Brontë, claiming that he did not allow his children to eat meat. This is refuted by one of Emily Brontë's diary papers, in which she describes preparing meat and potatoes for dinner at the parsonage.<ref>Juliet Barker, The Brontës</ref> It has been argued that Gaskell's approach transferred the focus of attention away from the 'difficult' novels, not just Brontë's, but all the sisters', and began a process of sanctification of their private lives.Template:Sfn

Nussey letters

Brontë held lifelong correspondence with her former schoolmate Ellen Nussey. 350 of the some 500 letters sent by Brontë to Nussey survive, whereas all of Nussey's letters to Brontë were burned at Nicholls's request.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The surviving letters provide most of the information known on Charlotte Brontë's life and are the backbone of her biographies.

Brontë's letters to Nussey seem to have romantic undertones: Template:Blockquote Template:Blockquote Template:Blockquote

Some scholars believe it is possible, given their passionate friendship, that Charlotte Brontë was in a romantic or sexual relationship with Ellen Nussey.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Heger letters

On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin Heger after leaving Brussels in 1844.Template:Sfn Written in French except for one postscript in English, the letters broke the prevailing image of Brontë as an angelic martyr to Christian and female duties that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell.Template:Sfn The letters, which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Heger frequently appears not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, although they are complex and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an example of literary self-dramatisation and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil.Template:Sfn

In 1980 a commemorative plaque was unveiled at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, on the site of the Madam Heger's school, in honour of Charlotte and Emily.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Legacy

Kazuo Ishiguro, when asked to name his favourite novelist, answered "Charlotte Brontë's recently edged out Dostoevsky...I owe my career, and a lot else besides, to Jane Eyre and Villette."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Publications

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Branwell Brontë, Painting of the 3 Brontë Sisters, left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Branwell painted himself out of this portrait of his three sisters. National Portrait Gallery, London.

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An idealised posthumous portrait by Duyckinick, 1873, based on a drawing by George Richmond

Juvenilia

The Young Men's Magazine, Volumes 1–3 (August 1830)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
A Book of Ryhmes (1829)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Spell<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
The Secret
Lily Hart<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
The Foundling<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Albion and Marina<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
Tales of the Islanders<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Tales of Angria (written 1838–1839 – a collection of childhood and young adult writings including five short novels)
- Mina Laury<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
- Stancliffe's Hotel<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
- The Duke of Zamorna
- Henry HastingsTemplate:Efn<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
- Caroline Vernon<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
- The Roe Head Journal Fragments<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
- Farewell to Angria<ref name=":1" />

The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense was written in 1833 under the pseudonym Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It shows the influence of Walter Scott, and Brontë's modifications to her earlier gothic style have led Christine Alexander to comment that, in the work, "it is clear that Brontë was becoming tired of the gothic mode per se".Template:Sfn

"At the end of 1839, Brontë said goodbye to her fantasy world in a manuscript called Farewell to Angria. More and more, she was finding that she preferred to escape to her imagined worlds over remaining in reality – and she feared that she was going mad. So she said goodbye to her characters, scenes and subjects. [...] She wrote of the pain she felt at wrenching herself from her 'friends' and venturing into lands unknown".<ref name=":1" />

Novels

Jane Eyre, published in 1847
Shirley, published in 1849
Villette, published in 1853
The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, was first submitted together with Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. Subsequently, The Professor was resubmitted separately, and rejected by many publishing houses. It was published posthumously in 1857
Emma, unfinished; Brontë wrote only 20 pages of the manuscript, published posthumously in 1860. In recent decades at least two continuations of this fragment have appeared:
- Emma, by "Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady", published 1980; although this has been attributed to Elizabeth Goudge,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> the actual author was Constance Savery.<ref>Bronte, Charlotta and Another Lady. Emma. Moscow: Folio. 2001. 11.</ref>
- Emma Brown, by Clare Boylan, published 2003

Poetry

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Selected Poems of the Brontës, Everyman Poetry (1997)

Media portrayals

In the 1946 Curtis Bernhardt film Devotion, a fictionalized biography of the Brontë sisters, Olivia de Havilland plays Charlotte.
A November 15, 1953 episode of the Loretta Young Show, "The Bronte Story", features Loretta Young as Charlotte.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The 2018 comic Die features a fictionalised version of Charlotte within the Brontes' fictional kingdom of Angria.
In the 2022 Frances O'Connor film Emily, about Emily Brontë, Alexandra Dowling plays Charlotte.

Notes

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References