Charlotte, Emily, and Ann Bronte were all successful writers, but died young. Their childhood was marked by an imaginary world and their father’s harshness. Charlotte published under a pseudonym and faced rejection before achieving literary success with Jane Eyre, Agnes Gray, and Wuthering Heights. Personal tragedy followed, with the deaths of their brother and two sisters. Charlotte battled depression and wrote Shirley and Villette before her own untimely death at 39. Her work is now widely read and respected, and an important step in feminist thought.
Charlotte Bronte is best known for her novel Jane Eyre and the fact that her family has produced not one but three female writers. Emily Bronte is celebrated for her poetry and her work Wuthering Heights. Ann Bronte wrote Agnes Gray and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which enjoyed renewed critical interest following a 1996 BBC production.
Unfortunately, the Bronte sisters and their brother Branwell all died very young. Two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died after falling ill at the school they attended with Emily and Charlotte, the clergy’s daughter’s school. These deaths would affect the treatment of Jane Eyre’s disease at the Lowood Charity School which Jane attends.
Charlotte Bronte’s biographers describe an unusual childhood. Branwell, Emily, Ann and Charlotte have developed an imaginary world called Angria, based on Branwell’s toy soldiers. The Brontes’ father was an evangelical pastor, sometimes quite harsh with the children. Charlotte was sent back to school in Roe Head where she later became a teacher. Yet her father asked for her presence at her home to teach her younger sisters a year later.
Bronte knew well the “profession of housekeeper” which he describes in Jane Eyre and in Villette. He worked as a housekeeper for two families before returning home to attempt to start a school with Emily. The school failed, but Charlotte took her, Emily’s and Ann’s poems and had them published. Bronte wrote under the pseudonym Curer Bell, as works submitted by men were more likely to be published.
Also in 1846, Charlotte Bronte attempted to publish her first novel The Professor. It was rejected by the publishers, and many critics consider it a rather immature work, with a subject almost identical to Villette’s. Villette, a novel about a penniless woman who moves to France to make her way as a teacher, differs from Bronte’s first novel in that it uses the narrative of a female rather than a male character. It also stands as a serious attack on both the French and Catholicism.
1848 saw the publication of three Bronte Sisters novels, Jane Eyre, Agnes Gray and Wuthering Heights. Unfortunately, while the year brought literary triumph to the Brontes, it also brought personal tragedy. Their beloved brother Branwell died of disease after a long addiction to both alcohol and opium. His reckless habits made Charlotte feel some relief at his disappearance. However, Branwell’s death was followed by Emily’s in the same year and Ann’s the year after.
Charlotte Bronte, as the only remaining sister, battled “melancholy” or more properly termed, deep depression, after her sisters’ deaths. Her novel Shirley Her was published in 1849 and the title character is thought to have been modeled after Ann Her. It is a dutiful tribute, and moreover it is considered by feminist critics to be the most important and far-sighted of Bronte’s work. The title character is an independent woman who makes her own decisions regardless of the advice of her male relatives and friends.
Villette was published in 1853, two years before Bronte married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nichols. Sadly she Bronte contracted pneumonia while she was pregnant with her first child and she died that same year in 1855, aged just 39. The Professor was published posthumously in 1857. Despite a short list of works, she was well respected among her contemporary authors and maintained a close friendship with fellow novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell.
Gaskell’s work, The Life of Charlotte Bronte is still considered by many to be the best biography of Bronte’s life. Gaskell’s biography later inspired feminist critics to argue for Bronte’s inclusion in the literary canon, and Bronte is now widely read in college literature courses. Critics differ on which of Bronte’s four novels is better than her, but they find something to commend in all of them. Her work is an important step in the development of feminist thought, as well as simply excellent work in its own terms.
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