Charlotte Bronte - Classic Literature Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte was one third of the greatest literary family in English history. Along with her sisters, Emily and Anne, she generated a legacy that still stands today. Often acknowledged as the most ambitious of the three, Charlotte published both novels and poetry and achieved much critical success in an era when women were supposed to be confined to the home.
Charlotte Bronte was born in Thornton in Yorkshire, England on April 21st, 1816. She was one of six children born to Reverend Patrick Bronte and his wife, Maria. Third of six children, Charlotte’s siblings were Maria, Elizabeth, Patrick Branwell, Emily and Anne.
Charlotte’s early life was anything but easy. She was just five years old when her mother died of cancer and, as a result was sent away to school along with her other siblings. However, when, owing to the poor conditions, her older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died of fever in 1925, the remaining siblings were withdrawn from school.
Most of the rest of her education was conducted at home. Their tutor, Aunt Bess, taught all of the Bronte children and made good use of the huge collection of literature available at Haworth. However, Charlotte’s childhood was far from happy and, to alleviate the boredom and misery, she used to write stories and poems into minute notebooks, creating her own imaginary world.
Charlotte’s next foray outside of the family home was her enrolment at Roe Head in 1831. She excelled there, earning a number of awards for her scholarship and also an offer of a teaching job in 1832. Instead of taking the job, a mixture of family loyalty and homesickness ensured she chose to return home to tutor her sisters.
During her time at Haworth, as well as teaching her sisters, Charlotte also taught Sunday school in the village. Teaching soon became a career. She returned to Roe Head in 1835 in the position she had previously turned down and initially thrived there.
After her departure from Roe Head in 1838, Charlotte spent time working as a governess for two families. However, neither job lasted very long because of mental illness that blighted Charlotte throughout her life. Chronic shyness and profound melancholia forced her to return home after only a few months as a governess in both homes.
Determined to teach despite difficulties she had experienced, Charlotte embarked upon the most exciting adventure of her life. In 1842, accompanied by her sister Emily, she travelled to Brussels in order to learn how to run her own school. After exploring the culture to her satisfaction, she returned home in 1844.
Although her attempts to open a school faced abject failure, it was at this time that her literary career really began to achieve a measure of success. It was in 1845 that she first discovered her sister, Emily’s, poetry and suggested publishing a volume of poetry by all three sisters. After some persuasion, Emily consented and Poems by Acton, Ellis and Currer Bell was published the following year.
Only two copies of Poems were sold at the time, but Charlotte’s novels achieved greater success. The Professor, Charlotte’s first novel, was rejected by a number of publishers and never saw print in her lifetime, but her second novel, Jane Eyre, achieved great critical success. Published in 1847, the novel earned Charlotte £300, a fortune at the time.
Jane Eyre follows the life of an orphaned girl who struggles to make ends meet as a governess before inheriting a sum of money from an uncle and finding true love. In recent years Charlotte has been praised for her feminist sentiment, but at the time she was publishing under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Many women of the time wrote under different names in order to appear masculine and thus less likely to experience prejudice.
Jane Eyre was followed in 1848 by Charlotte’s third novel Shirley and her fourth, Villette, appeared in 1852. Both novels featured strong women who were, like Charlotte, well ahead of their time. However, although she was a well-known author by the time both novels were printed, she continued to use her pseudonym.
Throughout the period between 1847 and Charlotte’s death in 1855, mental illness continued to plague her. Despite her success, she suffered from hypochondria, nerves and melancholia for the rest of her life. Her condition was exacerbated by the deaths of Branwell and Emily in 1848 and Anne in 1849.
Charlotte did experience some measure of happiness during her final years. She married her father’s curate, A.B. Nicholls, much to Patrick’s disapproval, in 1854. By the time she fell pregnant, however, he had softened to the match, although he never became a grandfather.
Charlotte died on March 31st, 1855 of exhaustion, according to her death certificate. However, it was likely that pneumonia and complications with her pregnancy were the actual causes of death. She was aged 38. This was the greatest age any of the Bronte siblings lived to.
