Charlotte Bronte Biography and List of Works

English writer noted for her novel JANE EYRE (1847), sister of Anne Brontë and Emily Brontë. The three sisters are as famous for their short, tragic lives, as for their novels. In the past 40 years Charlotte Brontë's literary stature has risen rapidly, and feminist critique has done much to show that she speaks for oppressed women of every age.

"'And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Mater Reed, because missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and try to make yourself agreeable to them.'"
(from Jane Eyre)

'A little, plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid', is how George Lewes described Charlotte Brontë to George Eliot. She was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman who moved with his family to Haworth on the Yorkshire moors in 1820. After their mother and two eldest children died, Charlotte was left, with her sisters Emily and Anne and brother Branwell, in the care of their father, and their strict, religious aunt, Elisabeth Branwell. To escape their unhappy surroundings the children created imaginary kingdoms, which were built around Branwell's toy soldiers, and which inspired them to create stories concerning the fantasylands of Angria and Gondal.

"We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air."

Charlotte attended Clergy Daughter's School in Lancashire in 1824. She returned home the next year because of the harsh conditions. In 1831 she went to school at Roe Head, where she later worked as a teacher. However, she fell ill, suffering from melancholia, and gave up the post. Charlotte's attempts to earn her living as a governess were hindered by her disabling shyness, her ignorance of normal children, and her yearning to be with her sisters.

In 1842 Charlotte travelled to Brussels with Emily to learn French, German, and management. Her attempt to open a school failed in 1844. The collection of poems, POEMS BY CURRER, ELLIS AND ACTON BELL (1846), which she wrote with her sisters, sold only two copies. By this time the sisters had finished novels; Charlotte's first, THE PROFESSOR, never found a publisher in her lifetime, but Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted by Thomas Newby in 1847 and published the following year.

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last."
(from the preface to Jane Eyre)

Undeterred by rejection, Charlotte began Jane Eyre, which appeared in 1847, and became an immediate success. Charlotte dedicated the book to William Makepeace Thackeray, who described it as 'the masterwork of a great genius'. The heroine is a penniless orphan who becomes a teacher, obtains a post as a governess, inherits money from an uncle, and eventually marries the Byronic hero. It was followed by SHIRLEY (1848) and VILLETTE (1853), based on her memories of Brussels. Although her identity was well known, Charlotte continued to publish under the psuedonym Currer Bell. Her tragedy, BELISAIOUS, is lost.

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte uses her experiences at the Evangelical school and as governess. The novel severely criticizes the limited options open to educated but impoverished women. Jane's passionate desire for a wider life, and her rebellious questioning of convention, reflects Charlotte's own dreams. The gloomy hero, Mr Rochester, represents a woman man: the ideal of masculine tenderness is combined with a intensely masculine strength of character. Jane's discovery at the altar that Rochester has an insane wife hidden in the attic, is the most shocking plot twist in the novel. It was refreshed in Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which tells the story of Rochester's ill-fated Creole wife.

The title character from Shirley is an attempted ideal portrait of Emily. However, she does not appear in the first third of the book. Shirley is perhaps the first fully developed, independent, brave, outspoken heroine in Victorian fiction, and she has become a character type that has deeply influenced mass-market novels read by women. Caroline Helstone, the other heroine, is a more conventional figure. When Charlotte started to write the book, the four Brontës were all alive and together at the parsonage; before the novel was completed, a family tragedy shadowed the work.

Branwell, whose wildness and intemperance had caused the sisters much distress, died in September 1848, Emily died in December of the same year, and Anne the following summer. In 1854 Charlotte married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died during her pregnancy on March 31, 1855 in Haworth, Yorkshire.

For further reading: The Life of Charlotte Brontë by E. Gaskell (1857); The Brontë's Web of Childhood by Fannie Ratchford (1941); Passionate Search by M. Cromton (1955); Their Proper Sphere by Inga-Stina Ewbank (1966); Weaver of Dreams: Charlotte Brontë by William S. Braithwaite (1966); The Accents of Persuasion by Robert Martin (1966); Charlotte Brontë by Winifred Gerin (1967); The Bronte Novels by W.A. Craig (1968); The Brontes. The Critical Heritage by, ed. by M. Allott (1974); Unquiet Soul by M. Peters (1975); Myth of Power by Terry Eagleton (1975); The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë by Elfrida Vipont (1893); Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality by John Maynard (1984); The Brontes Irish Background by E. Chitham (1986); The Brontës and Their Background by Tom Winnifrith (2nd ed. 1988); The Brontës by Juliet Barker (1994); Chalotte Brontë by Lyndall Gordon (1994); Charlotte Bronte by Diane Long Hoeveler, Lisa Jadwin (1997); Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology by Sally Shuttleworth (1997) - See also: Jean Rhys.

Museums and places to visit: Brontë Society and Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Keighley; Brontë Way - a forty mile walk in four section to sites associated with the Brontës; Oakwell Hall County Park, Nutter Lane, Birstall - house features as "Fieldhead" in Charlotte's Shirley; The Red House Museum, Oxford Rd, Gomersal, Cleckheaton - House appears as "Briarmains in Charlotte's Shirley; Wuthering Heights Walk, a six mile walk to Top Withins, the setting for Wuthering Heights.

Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-1848) - collaborated with Charlotte in creating the imaginary world of Angria. After failing as a painter and writer, he took to drink and opium, then worked as a tutor and assistant clerk for a railway company. In 1842 he was dismissed and joined his sister Anne at Thorp Green Hall as a tutor. His affair with his employer's wife ended disastrously. Patrick Brontë returned to Haworth in 1845, where he rapidly declined and died three years later.

Books by Charlotte Bronte