Charlotte bronte biography bbc

English novelist and poet (–)

Charlotte Brontë
Portrait by George Richmond (, chalk on paper)
Born	()21 April Thornton, Yorkshire, England
Died	31 March () (aged&#;38) Haworth, Yorkshire, England
Resting place	St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth
Pen name	Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley Currer Bell
Occupation	Novelist, poet, governess
Genre	Fiction, poetry
Notable works
Spouse
Parents
Relatives	Brontë family

Charlotte Nicholls (née&#;Brontë; 21 April &#;– 31 March ), commonly known as Charlotte Brontë (, commonly),^[1] 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 leading 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 , aged 14 years.

She left the year after to train her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, then returned to Roe Head in as a teacher. In , she undertook the role of governess for the Sidgwick family, but left after a few months. The three sisters attempted to reveal a school in Haworth but failed to attract pupils.

Instead, they turned to writing; they each first published in 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 The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in , 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 but died on 31 Rally , almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting.^[a]

Early years and education

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 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 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 , leaving five daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and a son, Branwell, to be taken nurture of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell.

In August , 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 progress, and hastened the deaths of Maria (born ) and Elizabeth (born ), who both died of tuberculosis in May (Maria) and June (Elizabeth) After the deaths of his older daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school.

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 buddy and guardian of her younger sisters".^[3] Brontë wrote her first known poem at the age of 13 in , and was to go on to write more than poems in the course of her being.

Many of her poems were "published" in their homemade magazine Branwell's Blackwood's Magazine, and concerned the fictional world of Glass Town. 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 ^[6] Charlotte, in private letters, called Glass Town "her 'world below', a private escape where she could act out her desires and multiple identities".^[7] 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 Territory realism, none the less at this stage there is still a sense of the writings as a family enterprise".^[8]

However, from onwards, Emily and Anne 'seceded' from the Glass Town Confederacy to create a 'spin-off' called Gondal, which included many of their poems.^[9][10] After , Charlotte and Branwell concentrated on an evolution of the Glass Town Confederacy called Angria.^[11] Christine Alexander, a Brontë juvenilia historian,^[12] wrote "both Charlotte and Branwell ensured the consistency of their mythical 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".^{[13]:&#;6–7&#;} The sagas the siblings created were episodic and elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which contain been published as juvenilia.

They provided them with an obsessive interest during childhood and prior adolescence, which prepared them for literary vocations in adulthood.

Between and , Brontë continued her learning at a boarding school twenty miles away in Mirfield, Roe Head (now part of Hollybank Special School^[14]), where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.

In she wrote a novella, The Green Dwarf, using the name Wellesley. Around about , her stories shifted from tales of the supernatural to more realistic stories. She returned to Roe Head as a educator from to Unhappy and lonely as a teacher at Roe Head, Brontë took out her sorrows in poetry, writing a series of melancholic poems.

In "We wove a Web in Childhood" written in December , Brontë drew a sharp contrast between her miserable life as a teacher and the vivid imaginary worlds she and her siblings had created. In another poem "Morning was its freshness still" written at the alike time, Brontë wrote "Tis acrimonious sometimes to recall/Illusions once deemed fair".

Many of her poems concerned the imaginary world of Angria, often concerning Byronic heroes, and in December she wrote to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey asking him for encouragement of her career as a poet. Southey replied,^[17] 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 contain for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation." This advice she respected but did not heed.

In Brontë took up the first of many positions as governess to families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until In particular, from May to July she was employed by the Sidgwick family at their summer residence, Stone Gappe, in Lothersdale, where one of her charges was John Benson Sidgwick (–), an unruly child who on one occasion threw the Bible at Charlotte, an incident that may hold been the inspiration for a part of the opening chapter of Jane Eyre in which John Reed throws a publication at the young Jane.

Brontë did not enjoy her operate as a governess, noting her employers treated her almost as a slave, constantly humiliating her. She was of slight erect and was less than five feet tall.^[20]

Brussels and Haworth

In Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Constantin Héger (–) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Héger (–).

During her time in Brussels, Brontë, who favoured the Protestant perfect of an individual in immediate contact with God, objected to the stern Catholicism of Madame Héger, which she considered a tyrannical religion that enforced conformity and submission to the Pope.

In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their moment at the school was slash short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to glance after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January to take up a instruction post at the school.

Her second stay was not happy: she was homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Héger. She returned to Haworth in January 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 place.

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 , the project was abandoned.^[22]

First publication

In May , Charlotte, Emily, and Anne self-financed the publication of a joint collection of poems under their assumed names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

In Charlotte and her family moved to a village called Haworth where her father took the position of perpetual curate at St Michael and All Angels Church. Only a year later when Charlotte was just five years old, her mother died, departing behind five daughters and one son. Unfortunately, this was a bad experience for the fresh Charlotte. Back at home, Charlotte began to act as a motherly figure towards her younger siblings, feeling a sense of duty and responsibility after the loss of her two sisters.

The pseudonyms veiled the sisters' sex while preserving their initials; thus Charlotte was Currer Bell. "Bell" was the middle identify 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 institution (and maybe their father).^[23] Of the decision to use noms de plume, Charlotte wrote:

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous option 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.^[24]

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

Main article: 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 aspire to send. Brontë responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August Six weeks later, Jane Eyre was published. It tells the story of a plain governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her ahead 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 understanding, dies in a dramatic property fire. The book's style was innovative, combining Romanticism, naturalism with gothicmelodrama, and broke new basis in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective.

Brontë believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed the experience into a novel with universal appeal.

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). 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).

Accompanying the speculation was a transform in the critical reaction to Brontë's work, as accusations were made that the writing was "coarse", a judgement more readily made once it was suspected that Currer Bell was a woman. However, sales of Jane Eyre continued to be sturdy and may even have increased as a result of the novel developing a reputation as an "improper" book.^[31] A talented amateur artist, Brontë personally did the drawings for the second edition of Jane Eyre and in the summer of two of her paintings were shown at an exhibition by the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Leeds.

Shirley and bereavements

In 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 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 Anne died of the similar disease in May Brontë was unable to write at this time.

After Anne's death Brontë resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief,^[32] and Shirley, which deals with themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in society, was published in October 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, 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.^[34]

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.^[35] Brontë sent an promptly copy of Shirley to Martineau whose home at Ambleside she visited.

The two friends mutual an interest in racial relations and the abolitionist movement; recurrent themes in their writings.^[36][37] Brontë was also acquainted with William Makepeace Thackeray and G. H. Lewes.

She never left Haworth for more than a not many 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:

two gentlemen come in, primary a tiny, delicate, serious, tiny lady, with fair straight hair and steady eyes.

She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the books&#;– the wonderful books.

The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smirk as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Fail Brontë can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who desire to chatter.

Everyone waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat curved still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all after Lose Brontë had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on.

He lay his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door softly behind him long afterwards Mrs Procter asked me if I knew what had happened. It was one of the dullest evenings [Mrs Procter] had ever spent in her life the ladies who had all arrive expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club.^[38]

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

Villette

Brontë's third novel, the last published in her lifetime, was Villette, which appeared in Its main themes incorporate isolation, how such a condition can be borne,^[39] and the internal conflict brought about by social repression of individual want.

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 possess 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 retain 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 animation as inspiration for fictional events, 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 existence suitably "feminine" in its portrayal of Lucy's desires.^[41]

Marriage

Before the publication of Villette, Brontë received an expected proposal of marriage from Irishman Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, who had prolonged been in love with her.

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, 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 , she had accepted his proposal.

They gained the approval of her father by April and married on 29 June. Her father Patrick had intended to present Charlotte away, but at the last minute decided he could not, and Charlotte had to make her way to the church without him.^[48] Because her father did not attend it was Miss Wooler (Charlotte's former teacher at Roe Head Institution, 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.^[49] By all accounts, her marriage was a success and Brontë found herself very happy in a way that was fresh to her.

Death

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".^[50] She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March , three weeks before her 39th birthday.

Her death certificate gives the result in of death as phthisis,^[51] but biographers including Claire Harman and others suggest that she died from dehydration and malnourishment due to vomiting caused by grave morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum.^[52] Brontë was buried in the family vault in the Church of St Michael and All Angels at Haworth.

Find out more about the Brontë sisters on the BBC What did the Brontës do for women? Find out in this iWonder guide Writers Claire Harman and Tracy Chevalier discuss Charlotte Bronte's.

The Professor, the first novel Brontë had written, was published posthumously in 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 Most of her writings about the fictional country Angria have also been published since her death.

In , The New York Times published a belated obituary for her.^[53]

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."^[54]

In a letter to Ellen Nussey she wrote:

If I could always live with you, and daily read the bible with you, if your lips and mine could at the matching time, drink the same draught from the same pure fountain of Mercy – I desire, I trust, I might one day become better, far finer , than my evil wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit, and warm to the flesh will now approve me to be.^[54]

The Life of Charlotte Brontë

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in It was an important step for a principal female novelist to write a biography of another, and Gaskell's approach was unusual in that, rather than analysing her subject's achievements, she concentrated on intimate details of Brontë's life, emphasising those aspects that countered the accusations of "coarseness" that had been levelled at her writing.

The biography is frank in places, but omits details of Brontë's love for Héger, 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. Mrs. Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Brontë, claiming that he did not allow his children to consume 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.^[57] 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.

Nussey letters

Brontë held lifelong correspondence with her former schoolmate Ellen Nussey.

of the some letters sent by Brontë to Nussey survive, whereas all of Nussey's letters to Brontë were burned at Nicholls's request.^[59] The surviving letters provide most of the information known on Charlotte Brontë's life and are the backbone of her autobiographies.

Brontë's letters to Nussey sound to have romantic undertones:

What shall I do without you? How long are we likely to be separated? Why are we to be denied each other's society- I long to be with you. Why are we to be divided?

Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving each other too well-^[60]

Ellen, I wish I could exist with you always. I kickoff to cling to you more fondly than ever I did.

If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own, I do believe we might live and devote on till Death without organism dependent on any third person for happiness ^[61]

how sorely my heart longs for you I need not say Less than ever can I taste or know pleasure till this labor is wound up.

And yet I often sit up in bed at night, thinking of and wishing for you.^[62]

Some scholars believe it is possible that Charlotte Brontë was in a romantic or sexual relationship with Ellen Nussey.

Héger letters

On 29 July The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin Héger after leaving Brussels in 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.

The letters, which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Héger 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.

In 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.^[64]

Legacy

Kazuo Ishiguro, when asked to name his favourite novelist, answered "Charlotte Brontë's recently edged out DostoevskyI owe my career, and a lot else besides, to Jane Eyre and Villette."^[65]

Publications

Juvenilia

The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense was written in under the pseudonym Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley.^[72] It shows the shape 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".^[73]

"At the end of , 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".^[7]

Novels

• Jane Eyre, published in
• Shirley, published in
• Villette, published in
• 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

• Emma, unfinished; Brontë wrote only 20 pages of the manuscript, published posthumously in In recent decades at least two continuations of this fragment have appeared:

Poetry

Media portrayals

Notes

References