Charlotte Bronte is best known for her novel, Jane Eyre. Not many know that the sufferings depicted in this book are records of Charlotte’s own experiences.
Charlotte Bronte was born in 1816 at Hartshead, England, but moved shortly after her birth to Haworth, Yorkshire. Her father, Patrick, was a poor English clergyman and was eccentric and abusive. The parsonage was dreary and unpleasant, a low, oblong, stone building standing at the top of the straggling village on a steep hill without
shelter of a tree. The churchyard pressed won on it on both sides, and behind it was a long tract of wild moors.
On the direction of their father, the Bronte children were fed a vegetable diet and clothed in coarse clothes to make them hardy and to prevent their becoming proud. But they were far from hardy; on the contrary, they were small, feeble, and stunted in growth. Their mother died from cancer when they were all young, and while her sister, Elizabeth Branwell came to care for them, the children were left mostly to themselves.
Four of the girls were sent away to school, Charlotte among them. They were sent to the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. The food was poor and insufficient and they were treated with inhuman severity. The Lowood School in Jane Eyre was modeled after this school, and “Miss Scratchhard” in the novel was modeled after the manager of the school. A fever broke out at the school and the girls returned home, but two of the sisters died as a result of the treatment and the sickness contracted at the school.
When Charlotte was nineteen years old, she became a teacher. But because of her bad health, she had to give it up. She then took a position as a governess, but the people treated her poorly, so this, too, was given up. She decided then to establish a private school with her sisters Emily and Anne. Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to prepare for this by studying under M. Hegier. At the end of six months time they were employed in the school they were attending, but at a small salary. They returned to England and attempted to gather pupils for their own private school, but found this very difficult, and gave up the task.
The life of Charlotte Bronte is a fine example of how a person can rise amidst turmoil and personal tragedies. All through her life she kept on losing her near and dear ones and still, with sheer single-mindedness became a novelist whom the world now respects and looks up to in terms of beauty through writing. Her life presents an experiment in which a woman used her isolation to explore hidden aspects of character. She was a woman who walked invisible but had a rising character.
She was the representative of the womenfolk and did her best to bring out the emotions and conflicts, a woman's experiences, through her novels and succeeded to a large extent. Through her novel Jane Eyre she started a whole new style of writing which influenced others to follow her steps.
• April 21, 1816
Charlotte Bronte was born at Thornton, England.
• 1820
Bronte family moved to Haworth.
• 1821
Charlotte’s mother died after a long illness.
• 1824
Charlotte was sent to Clergy Daughter’s school, Cowan Bridge along with Maria and Elizabeth.
• 1825
Death of Maria in May and Elizabeth in June. Charlotte returned to Haworth.
• January 1831
She went to Roe Head School.
• May 1832
She completed her education and returned to Haworth.
• July 1835
She accepted the offer to teach at Roe Head. Emily joined her as a pupil.
• May 1838
Charlotte resigned from her post and came back.
• 1839
She declined a marriage proposal from Rev Henry Nussey.
• 1841
Took up a job as a governess at Upperhead House. She returned in December.
• 1842
Charlotte and Emily enrolled at Pensionnat Heger in Brussels. Charlotte was appointed a pupil–teacher there in August-September. Death of Miss Branwell.
• 1843
She resigned from her post in December and returned to Haworth.
• 1844
Charlotte attempts to start a school at Haworth parsonage with her sisters.
• May 1846
Published a volume of poems titled Poems By Currer, Ellis And Acton Bell. Completed The Professor.
• October 16, 1847
Jane Eyre was published and it became a hit.
• September 24, 1848
Her brother Branwell died followed by Emily who died on December 19.
• May 28, 1849
Her sister Anne died.
• October 26, 1849
Shirley was published.
• December 1852
Arthur Bell Nicholls proposed her.
• 1853
Her another work Villette was published.
• June 24, 1854
She married Arthur Bell Nicholls. Began work on Emma, which she never completed.
• March 31, 1855
Died at the age of 39, during pregnancy.
• 1857
Charlotte’s previously rejected novel The Professor was posthumously published.
• The efforts must be beneficial, whatever the result maybe because it teaches us experience, and an additional knowledge of this world.
• I will show you a heroine as plain and small as myself.
- To her sisters.
• 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 recreation.
– Southey’s advice to Charlotte.
• I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay, cold, expressionless, bloodless: for every appearance of feeling of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust are alike construed by the world into the attempt to hook a husband.
– In letter to her friend.
• It seems to me that sorrow must come sometime to everybody and those who scarcely taste it in their youth, often have a more brimming and bitter cup of drain in afterlife.
– In letter to a friend.
• If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship we must love friends for their sake rather than our own.
• Better to be without logic than without feeling.
• A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
• The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master, something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.
• Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within as on the state of things without and around us.
• If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt you would not be without friends.
– From Jane Eyre
• Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.
– From Jane Eyre
• It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility, they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
– From Jane Eyre
Next they turned to literary work. The Bronte sisters had written many stories and poems as children as the romped around the Yorkshire moors, so they were quite well prepared for this new endeavor. They issued a volume of poems, but it met with little success. Their next venture was in prose tales. The productions were, “The Professor”, by Charlotte; “Wuthering Heights”, by Emily, and “Agnes Grey”, by Anne. Each wrote under an assumed name. While those of Emily and Anne were accepted, Charlotte’s was rejected everywhere she submitted it and was not published until after her death.
In the face of all this failure and discouragement, Charlotte went on to write “Jane Eyre”. It met with immediate success. It was translated into most of the languages of Europe, and was put on stage in England and Germany under the title “The Orphan of Lowood”.
Charlotte’s writing became her passport into the highest of literary circles of London and all of Europe, meeting the most prominent writers of the time. But she was a rather shy woman and didn’t like the spotlight, so she returned to her home. She was still in poor health, as she had been most of her life, and died in March of 1855.
