Victorian
Charlotte Brontë
1816 – 1855
British novelist and poet (1816-1855)
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- British
- Gothic
About
Charlotte Nicholls, commonly known by her maiden name Charlotte Brontë, was an English novelist and poet, and was the elder sister of Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which was first published under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Jane Eyre was a great success on publication, and has since been acknowledged as a classic of English literature.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Portrait by George Richmond (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons.
Life on the Timeline
Major Works
Exam Dossier
Most-asked topics
- Jane Eyre as autobiographical Bildungsroman
- Gothic elements in Jane Eyre (Thornfield, Bertha Mason)
- Feminist and proto-feminist readings of Jane Eyre
- The Brontë sisters' male pseudonyms (Currer, Ellis, Acton Bell)
- First-person and unreliable narration in Villette
- Shirley as a social/industrial novel of the Luddite era
- The Professor as Brontë's first-written, last-published novel
- Brontë family biography and Haworth parsonage
- Comparison with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
- Narrative technique and psychological interiority in Brontë's fiction
Previous-year themes
- Jane Eyre's opening line and first-person narrative voice
- Feminist/proto-feminist self-assertion in Jane Eyre
- Gothic conventions and their use in Jane Eyre
- Reasons for and significance of the Bell pseudonyms
- Jane Eyre as Bildungsroman/autobiographical novel
- Villette's narrative unreliability and psychological realism
- Shirley's engagement with industrial unrest and women's roles
- Comparative study of the Brontë sisters' fiction
Common confusions
- Confusing Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights — different authors, different narrative voices and settings.
- Mixing up the sisters' pseudonyms: Currer Bell (Charlotte), Ellis Bell (Emily), Acton Bell (Anne).
- Confusing The Professor (written first, published last, 1857) with Jane Eyre (published first, 1847).
- Confusing the narrators of Brontë's novels: Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre), Villette (Lucy Snowe), The Professor (William Crimsworth).
- Confusing Shirley's Yorkshire/Luddite setting with Villette's fictional Belgian-inspired setting of Labassecour.
- Confusing Charlotte Brontë's death year (1855) with the year her final novel appeared in print (1857).
Memory tricks
'Currer, Ellis, Acton' = 'Charlotte, Emily, Anne' — the initials C-E-A track the sisters in birth order.
Jane Eyre = 1847: remember 'eighteen-forty-seven, Reader I married him at last.'
Publication order mnemonic: 'Jane Saw Villette's Professor' = Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, (The) Professor.
'Bertha in the attic, Jane at the altar' — the novel's gothic secret versus its romantic resolution.
'Lucy Snowe is cold and reserved, like her name Snowe' — for Villette's guarded narrator.
'Rejected first, published last' — for The Professor's unusual publication history.
