Charlotte Bronte

British novelist, born in Thornton, 21 April 1816 and died in Haworth, Yorkshire, 31 March 1855. She was the eldest of the three (famous) Bronte-sisters who all were writers.

Biography

Charlotte Bronte was one of six children of Patrick Bronte, an English clergyman and his wife Maria. She had four sisters: Maria, Elizabeth, Emily and Anne Bronte, the last two best known for their novels Wuthering Heights (Emily) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne). She also had one brother: Branwell who later became a painter and a poet.

Because Patrick Bronte got appointed Reverend in Haworth in 1820, the family moved and lived there. The village of Haworth itself and the landscape around it served as model for many settings in all the Bronte novels. Maria Bronte, died of cancer the year after that, and her sister Elizabeth moved in with the family to help Patrick with the children.

In 1824 the four elder daughters were enrolled at the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge. This was quite an undesirable change for the girls who had spent their time with their parents, playing the piano, reading, or doing needlework. But after one year the two elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, died of tuberculosis and hence, Patrick Bronte took his two remaining daughters, Emily and Charlotte, from school.

In 1831, Charlotte returned to school, enrolled in Miss Wooler's school in Roe Head, but soon left again in order to teach her siblings at home. In this time at home she wrote her novella "The Green Dwarf". She then returned to Roe Head to teach as a governess, helping to pay for her sister Emily's attending as a pupil there. In 1838, she left the school and returned to Haworth again.

With the aim to start a school someday, Charlotte travelled with Emily and Anne to Brussels, Belgium to complete her studies. She then learned French and German and studied literature very intensively. The sisters returned to their home in Haworth and tried to open a school, but failed tremendously. So, in 1846, the three sisters published their collection of poems under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, among the poems Charlotte's "Pilate's Wife's Dream", "The Teacher's Monologue" and "Passion". The same year, Charlotte wrote "The Professor" which was rejected for publication, but still, the following year, her very successful novel Jane Eyre was published, as well as Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey (still under pseudonyms).

Then followed a sad time for Charlotte: in 1848 her brother Branwell, an alcoholic and drug addict, died in September and her sister Emily died in December, probably from tuberculosis. Still worse, her youngest sister Anne died one year later, also from tuberculosis. In this depressing time Charlotte wrote her epic novel Shirley which was received very well. Thus she made her way into the literary circles of London, meeting Elizabeth Gaskell and William Thackeray.

In 1852, Reverend Arthur Nicholls proposed to Charlotte and was first refused because her father did not approve of it and because she was not really in love. In 1853, Charlotte published Vilette, which features the struggles of a woman who tries to be independent, but still is looking for love. In 1854, her father did not object to Arthur Nicholls anymore and so, the two of them married. While pregnant, Charlotte got ill with pneumonia and tried little to cure her illness. Hence, she died in 1855 from dehydration and weakness and rests with the remains of her mother, her sisters Maria and Elizabeth and her brother Branwell in the family vault of the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

Works

- Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846)

- Jane Eyre (1847)

- Shirley (1849)

- Vilette (1853)

- The Professor (1857)

Sources

http://www.online-literature.com/brontec/

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/brontbio.html

Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Edited with an Introduction by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Society, 1971.