| Charlotte Brontë | |
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| Born | 21 April 1816 Thornton, Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 31 March 1855 (aged 38) Haworth, Yorkshire, England |
| Pen name | Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley Currer Bell |
| Occupation | governess, novelist, poet |
| Genres | novel |
| Notable work(s) | Jane Eyre, Villette |
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Charlotte Brontë (pronounced /ˈbrɒnti/ or /ˈbrɒnteɪ/)[1]) (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels are English literature standards. Under the pen name Currer Bell, she wrote Jane Eyre.
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Charlotte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire in 1816, the third of six children, to Patrick Brontë (formerly "Patrick Brunty"), an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria née Branwell. In April 1821, the family moved a few miles to Haworth, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate. Mrs Brontë died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to be taken care of by her sister Elizabeth Branwell. In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). Its poor conditions, Charlotte maintained, permanently affected her health and physical development and hastened the deaths of her two elder sisters, Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who died of tuberculosis in June 1825 soon after their father removed them from the school on 1 June.
At home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children — Branwell, Emily and Anne — began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell wrote Byronic stories about their country — Angria — and Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about theirs — Gondal. The sagas were elaborate and convoluted (and still exist in part manuscripts) and provided them with an obsessive interest in childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for their literary vocations in adulthood.
Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head, Mirfield, from 1831 to 1832, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. During this period, she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf (1833) under the name of Wellesley. Charlotte returned as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. In 1839, she took up the first of many positions as governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841.
In 1842 she and Emily travelled to Brussels to enroll in a boarding school run by Constantin Heger (1809 – 1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger (1814 – 1891). In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the boarding school was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt who joined the family after the death of their mother to look after the children, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the boarding school. Her second stay at the boarding school was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She finally returned to Haworth in January 1844 and later used her time at the boarding school as the inspiration for some of The Professor and Villette.
In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily and Anne published a joint collection of poetry under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Although only two copies were sold, the sisters continued writing for publication and began their first novels. Charlotte used "Currer Bell" when she published her first two novels. Of this, Brontë later wrote:
Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' -- we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.[2]
Indeed, her novels were deemed coarse by the critics.[citation needed] There was speculation about the identity of Currer Bell, and whether Bell was a man or a woman.
Charlotte's brother, Branwell, the only son of the family, died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus exacerbated by heavy drinking in September 1848, although Charlotte believed his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell was also a suspected "opium eater", (i.e. a laudanum addict). Emily and Anne both died of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848 and May 1849, respectively.
Charlotte and her father were now left alone together. In view of the enormous success of Jane Eyre, she was persuaded by her publisher to visit London occasionally, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle, becoming friends with Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and G. H. Lewes. Her book had sparked a movement in regards to feminism in literature. The main character, Jane Eyre, in her novel Jane Eyre, was a parallel to herself, a woman who was strong. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not want to leave her aging father's side.
In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, and became pregnant soon thereafter. Her health declined rapidly during this time, and according to Gaskell, her earliest biographer, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness."[3] Charlotte died, along with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, at the young age of 38. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis (tuberculosis), but many biographers suggest she may have died from dehydration and malnourishment, caused by excessive vomiting from severe morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum. There is also evidence to suggest that Charlotte died from typhus she may have caught from Tabitha Ackroyd, the Brontë household's oldest servant, who died shortly before her. Charlotte was interred in the family vault in The Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë, the posthumous biography of Charlotte Brontë by Gaskell, was the first of many biographies about Charlotte to be published. Though frank in places, Gaskell suppressed details of Charlotte's love for Heger, a married man, as being too much of an affront to contemporary morals and as a possible source of distress to Charlotte's still-living friends, father and husband (Lane 1853 178–183). Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Brontë, claiming, for example, 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 the preparation of meat and potatoes for dinner at the parsonage, as Juliet Barker points out in her recent biography, The Brontës. It was discovered that Charlotte wrote 20 manuscript pages of a book, but died before she could finish; Clare Boylan finished it in 2007 as Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Brontë.
 Charlotte Brontë, photograph, 1854 |
 A postum idealized portrait by Duyckinick, 1873, based on a drawing by George Richmond |
 Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Bronte Parsonage Museum. |
LinkID=mp03781&page=2&rNo=19&role=art Charlotte Brontë — Drawing by George Richmond (National Portrait Gallery)]
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Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels have become enduring classics of English literature. She first published her work under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
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I feel that this also is true; but, dear Sir, is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?
These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.
She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.
I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.
For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.
It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.
It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.
Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.
Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.
CHARLOTTE BRONT (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848), and Anne (1820-1849), English novelists, were three of the six children of Patrick Bronte, a clergyman of the Church of England, who for the last forty-one years of his life was perpetual incumbent of the parish of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Patrick Brontë was born at Emsdale, Co. Down, Ireland, on the 17th of March 1777. His parents were of the peasant class, their original name of Brunty apparently having been changed by their son on his entry at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1802. In the intervening years he had been successively a weaver and schoolmaster in his native country. From Cambridge he became a curate, first at Wethersfield in Essex, in 1806, then for a few months at Wellington, Salop, in 1809. At the end of 1809 he accepted a curacy at Dewsbury, Yorkshire, following up this by one at Hartshead-cum-Clifton in the same county. At Hartshead Patrick Brontë married in 1812 Maria Branwell, a Cornishwoman, and there two children were born to him, Maria (1813-1825) and Elizabeth (1814-1825). Thence Patrick Brontë removed to Thornton, some 3 m. from Bradford, and here his wife gave birth to four children, Charlotte, Patrick Branwell (1817-1848), Emily Jane, and Anne, three of whom were to attain literary distinction.
In April 1820, three months after the birth of Anne Bronte, her father accepted the living of Haworth, a village near Keighley in Yorkshire, which will always be associated with the romantic story of the Brontes. In September of the following year his wife died. Maria Brontë lives for us in her daughter's biography only as the writer of certain letters to her "dear saucy Pat," as she calls her lover, and as the author of a recently published manuscript, an essay entitled The Advantages of Poverty in Religious Concerns, full of a sententiousness much affected at the time.
Upon the death of Mrs Brontë her husband invited his sisterin-law, Elizabeth Branwell, to leave Penzance and to take up her residence with his family at Haworth. Miss Branwell accepted the trust and would seem to have watched over her nephew and five nieces with conscientious care. The two eldest of those nieces were not long in following their mother. Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily, were all sent to the Clergy Daughters' school at Cowan Bridge in 1824, and Maria and Elizabeth returned home in the following year to die. How far the bad food and drastic discipline were responsible cannot be accurately demonstrated. Charlotte gibbeted the school long years afterwards in Jane Eyre, under the thin disguise of "Lowood," and the principal, the Rev. William Carus Wilson (1792-1859), has been universally accepted as the counterpart of Mr Naomi Brocklehurst in the same novel. But congenital disease more probably accounts for the tragedy from which happily Charlotte and Emily escaped, both returning in 1825 to a prolonged home life at Haworth. Here the four surviving children amused themselves in intervals of study under their aunt's guidance with precocious literary aspirations. The many tiny booklets upon which they laboured in the succeeding years have been happily preserved. We find stories, verses and essays, all in the minutest handwriting, none giving any indication of the genius which in the case of two of the four children was to add to the indisputably permanent in literature.
At sixteen years of age - in 1831 - Charlotte Brontë became a pupil at the school of Miss Margaret Wooler (1792-1885) at Roe Head, Dewsbury. She left in the following year to assist in the education of the younger sisters, bringing with her much additional proficiency in drawing, French and composition; she took with her also the devoted friendship of two out of her ten fellow-pupils - Mary Taylor (1817-1893) and Ellen Nussey (1817-1897). With Miss Taylor and Miss Nussey she corresponded for the remainder of her life, and her letters to the latter make up no small part of what has been revealed to us of her life story. Her next three years at Haworth were varied by occasional visits to one or other of these friends. In 1835 she returned to Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head as a governess, her sister Emily accompanying her as a pupil, but remaining only three months, and Anne then taking her place. The year following the school was removed to Dewsbury. In 1838 Charlotte went back to Haworth and soon afterwards received her first offer of marriage - from a clergyman, Henry Nussey, the brother of her friend Ellen. This was followed a little later by a second offer from a curate named Bryce. She refused both and took a ` situation as nursery governess, first with the Sidgwicks of Stonegappe, Yorkshire, and later with the Whites at Rawdon in the same county. A few months of this, however, filled her with an ambition to try and secure greater independence as the possessor of a school of her own, and she planned to acquire more proficiency in "languages" on the continent, as a pre liminary step. The aunt advanced some money, and accompanied by her sister Emily she became in February 1842 a pupil at the Pensionnat Heger, Brussels. Here both girls worked hard, and won the goodwill and indeed admiration of the principal teacher, M. Heger, whose wife was at the head of the establishment. But the two girls were hastily called back to England before the year had expired by the announcement of the critical illness of their aunt. Miss Branwell died on the 29th of October 1842. She bequeathed sufficient money to her nieces to enable them to reconsider their plan of life. Instead of a school at Bridlington which had been talked of, they could now remain with their father, utilize their aunt's room as a classroom, and take pupils. But Charlotte was not yet satisfied with what the few months on Belgian soil had done for her, and determined to accept M. Heger's offer that she should return to Brussels as a governess. Hence the year 1843 was passed by her at the Pensionnat Heger in that capacity, and in this period she undoubtedly widened her intellectual sphere by reading the many books in French literature that her friend M. Heger lent her. But life took on a very sombre shade in the lonely environment in which she found herself. She became so depressed that on one occasion she took refuge in the confessional precisely as did her heroine Lucy Snowe in Villette. In 1844 she returned to her father's house at Haworth, and the three sisters began immediately to discuss the possibilities of converting the vicarage into a school. Prospectuses were issued, but no pupils were forthcoming.
Matters were complicated by the fact that the only brother, Patrick Branwell, had about this time become a confirmed drunkard. Branwell had been the idol of his aunt and of his sisters. Educated under his father's care, he had early shown artistic leanings, and the slender resources of the family had been strained to provide him with the means of entering at the Royal Academy as a pupil. This was in 1835. Branwell, it would seem, indulged in a glorious month of extravagance in London and then returned home. His art studies were continued for a time at Leeds, but it may be assumed that no commissions came to him, and at last he became tutor to the son of a Mr Postlethwaite at Barrow-in-Furness. Ten months later he was a booking-clerk at Sowerby Bridge station on the Leeds & Manchester railway, and later at Luddenden Foot. Then he became tutor in the family of a clergyman named Robinson at Thorp Green, where his sister Anne was governess. Finally he returned to Haworth to loaf at the village inn, shock his sisters by his excesses, and to fritter his life away in painful sottishness. He died in September 1848, having achieved nothing reputable, and having disappointed all the hopes that had been centred in him. "My poor father naturally thought more of his only son than of his daughters," is one of Charlotte's dreary comments on the tragedy. In early years he had himself written both prose and verse; and a foolish story invented long afterwards attributed to him some share in his sisters' novels, particularly in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. But Charlotte distinctly tells us that her brother never knew that his sisters had published a line. He was too much under the effects of drink, too besotted and muddled in that last year or two of life, to have any share in their intellectual enthusiasms.
The literary life had, however, opened bravely for the three girls during those years. In 1846 a volume of verse appeared from the shop of Aylott & Jones of Paternoster Row; "Poems, by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell," was on the title-page. These names disguised the identity of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. The venture cost the sisters about £50 in all, but only two copies were sold. There were nineteen poems by Charlotte, twenty-one by Emily, and the same number by Anne. A consensus of criticism has accepted the fact that Emily's verse alone revealed true poetic genius. This was unrecognized then except by her sister Charlotte. It is obvious now to all.
The failure of the poems did not deter the authors from further effort. They had each a novel to dispose of. Charlotte Bronte's was called The Master, which before it was sent off to London was retitled The Professor. Emily's story was entitled Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Gray. All these stories travelled from publisher to publisher. At last The Professor reached the firm of Smith, Elder & Co., of Cornhill. The "reader" for that firm, R. Smith Williams (1800-1875), was impressed, as were also his employers. Charlotte Brontë received in August 1847 a letter informing her that whatever the merits of The Professor - and it was hinted that it lacked "varied interest" - it was too short for the three-volume form then counted imperative. The author was further told that a longer novel would be gladly considered. She replied in the same month with this longer novel, and Jane Eyre appeared in October 1847, to be wildly acclaimed on every hand, although enthusiasm was to receive a counterblast when more than a year later, in December 1848, Miss Rigby, afterwards Lady Eastlake (1809-1893), reviewed it in the Quarterly. Meanwhile the novels of Emily and Anne had been accepted by T. C. Newby. They were published together in three volumes in December 1847, two months later than Jane Eyre, although the proof sheets had been passed by the authors before their sister's novel had been sent to the publishers. The dilatoriness of Mr Newby was followed up by considerable energy when he saw the possibility of the novels by Ellis and Acton Bell sailing on the wave of Currer Bell's popularity, and he would seem very quickly to have accepted another manuscript by Anne Bronte, for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published by Newby in three volumes in June 1848. It was Newby's clever efforts to persuade the public that the books he published were by the author of Jane Eyre that led Charlotte and Anne to visit London this summer and interview Charlotte's publishers in Cornhill with a view to establishing their separate identity. Soon after their return home Branwell died (the 24th of September 1848), and less than three months later Emily died also at Haworth (the 19th December 1848). Then Anne became ill and on the 24th of May 1849 Charlotte accompanied her to Scarborough in the hope that the sea air would revive her. Anne died there on the 28th of May, and was buried in Scarborough churchyard. Thus in exactly eight months Charlotte Brontë lost all the three companions of her youth, and returned to sustain her father, fast becoming blind, in the now desolate home at Haworth.
In the interval between the death of Branwell and of Emily, Charlotte had been engaged upon a new novel - Shirley. Twothirds were written, but the story was then laid aside while its author was nursing her sister Anne. She completed the book after Anne's death, and it was published in October 1849. The following winter she visited London as the guest of her publisher, Mr George Smith, and was introduced to Thackeray, to whom she had dedicated Jane Eyre. The following year she repeated the visit, sat for her portrait to George Richmond, and was considerably lionized by a host of admirers. In August 1850 she visited the English lakes as the guest of Sir James KayShuttleworth, and met Mrs Gaskell, Miss Martineau, Matthew Arnold and other interesting men and women. During this period her publishers assiduously lent her books, and her criticisms of them contained in many letters to Mr George Smith and Mr Smith Williams make very interesting reading. In 1851 she received a third offer of marriage, this time from Mr James Taylor, who was in the employment of her publishers. A visit to Miss Martineau at Ambleside and also to London to the Great Exhibition made up the events of this year. On her way home she visited Manchester and spent two days with Mrs Gaskell. During the year 1852 she worked hard with a new novel, Villette, which was published in January of 1853. In September of that year she received a visit from Mrs Gaskell at Haworth; in May 1854 she returned it, remaining three days at Manchester, and planning with her hostess the details of her marriage, for at this time she had promised to unite herself with her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1817-1906), who had long been a pertinacious suitor for her hand but had been discouraged by Mr Bronte. The marriage took place in Haworth church on the 29th of June 1854, the ceremony being performed by the Rev. Sutcliffe Sowden, Miss Wooler and Miss Nussey acting as witnesses. The wedded pair spent their honeymoon in Ireland, returning to Haworth, where they made their home with Mr Bronte, Mr Nicholls having pledged himself to continue in his position as curate to his father-in-law. After less than a year of married life, however, Charlotte Nicholls died of an illness incidental to childbirth, on the 31st of March 18J5. She was buried in Haworth church by the side of her mother, Branwell and Emily. The father followed in 1861, and then her husband returned to Ireland, where he remained some years afterwards, dying in 1906.
The bare recital of the Brontë story can give no idea of its undying interest, its exceeding pathos. Their life as told by their biographer Mrs Gaskell is as interesting as any novel. Their achievement, however, will stand on its own merits. Anne Bronte's two novels, it is true, though constantly reprinted, survive principally through the exceeding vitality of the Bronte tradition. As a hymn writer she still has a place in most religious communities. Emily is great alike as a novelist and as a poet. Her "Old Stoic" and "Last Lines" are probably the finest achievement of poetry that any woman has given to English literature. Her novel Wuthering Heights stands alone as a monument of intensity owing nothing to tradition, nothing to the achievement of earlier writers. It was a thing apart, passionate, unforgettable, haunting in its grimness, its grey melancholy. Among women writers Emily Brontë has a sure and certain place for all time. As a poet or maker of verse Charlotte Brontë is undistinguished, but there are passages of pure poetry of great magnificence in her four novels, and particularly in Villette. The novels Jane Eyre and Villette will always command attention whatever the future of English fiction, by virtue of their intensity, their independence, their rough individuality.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Mrs Gaskell, was first published in 1857. Owing to the many controversial questions it aroused, as to the identity of Lowood in Jane Eyre with Cowan Bridge school, as to the relations of Branwell Brontë with his employer's wife, as to the supposed peculiarities of Mr Bronte, and certain other minor points, the third edition was considerably changed. The Life has been many times reprinted, but may be read in its most satisfactory form in the Haworth edition (1902), issued by the original publishers, Smith, Elder & Co. To this edition are attached a great number of letters written by Miss Brontë to her publisher, George Smith. The first new material supplied to supplement Mrs Gaskell's Life was contained in Charlotte Bronte: a Monograph, by T. Wemyss Reid (1877). This book inspired Mr A. C. Swinburne to issue separately a forcible essay on Charlotte and Emily Bronte, under the title of A Note on Charlotte Brontë (1877). A further collection of letters written by Miss Brontë was contained in Charlotte Brontë and her Circle, by Clement Shorter (1896), and interesting details can be gathered from the Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Augustine Birrell (1887), The Brontës in Ireland, by William Wright, D.D. (1893), Charlotte Brontë and her Sisters, by Clement Shorter (1906), and the Brontë Society publications, edited by Butler Wood (1895-1907). Miss A. Mary F. Robinson (Madame Duclaux) wrote a separate biography of Emily Brontë in 1883, and an essay in her Grands Ecrivains d'outre-Manche. The Brontes: Life and Letters, by Clement Shorter (1907), contains the whole of C. Bronte's letters in chronological order. (C. K. S.)
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