Charlotte Brontë
(1816–1855)

Charlotte Brontë, older sister of Emily Brontë, produced in her brief lifetime four novels of which the best known is Jane Eyre. Charlotte was one of six children born to Patrick Brontë, a clergyman, and Maria Branwell. After the death of her mother to cancer and of her two older sisters to tuberculosis, Charlotte and the three remaining Brontë children were placed in the care of an aunt. To combat the loneliness and drudgery of their isolated life on the Yorkshire moors, the children created the fantasy worlds of Angria and Gondal on paper.

At the age of 19, Charlotte accepted the post of governess for two separate families, rounding out an already hectic schedule as a schoolteacher. She traveled to Belgium to study foreign languages and further refine her teaching skills, but all the while she was secretly writing poetry. When it was revealed that her sisters were also dabbling in verse, the three jointly published their poems under the penname "Bell."

After this, each sister began independent work on a novel. Although Emily's book, Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted readily for publication, Charlotte was unable to generate interest in The Professor, a novel about the growth of an orphaned young man who goes to teach at a Belgian school. Her next effort, the fictionalized autobiography of an orphan girl, was an overnight sensation among readers of the popular Victorian novel. This was her masterpiece, Jane Eyre.

It was shortly after she had started her third novel, Shirley, that Brontë's life was shattered, first by the death of her brother, and then, within the space of a year, by the passing of her two sisters. As a means of coping with her grief and loneliness, she continued to work on the book and edited the writings her sisters had left behind.

In 1854, the year after Brontë completed her fourth and, it was to be, final novel, she married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate. She died a year later, of complications connected with pregnancy.

Despite her limited literary output, Brontë influenced the development of the novel with her close examination of women's inner battles and their frustrations with restricted lives. Her presentation of the individual's feelings under confining circumstances is powerful and realistic, anticipating later psychological character studies.

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