Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was an English poet and novelist.

Pseudonym: Currer Bell

She was born into the family of a rural clergyman in Yorkshire. Charlotte Brontë was barely five years old when her mother died, leaving the poor minister with a family of five daughters and a son. In poor health and fond of solitude, Patrick Brontë paid little attention to the children’s upbringing; indeed, they rarely saw him. The children were left to themselves and to the care of their eight-year-old eldest sister Maria, who had the burden of managing the scant household. The bleak, monotonous moorland surrounding them, the gloomy sight of the cemetery, the unwelcoming nature and roughness of the few townspeople whom the children had to encounter — such was the dismal reality that drove them still deeper into their inner ideal world, in which nothing resembled the surrounding life.

The event that left a deep mark on the secluded life of this strange family was the admission of the elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, to the school at Cowan Bridge (1824), near their village of Haworth. The inhospitable school, which gave them no nourishment for their intellectual development and undermined their already frail health, was vividly described by Charlotte in the novel Jane Eyre. A year later, the eldest, Maria, returned home ill and died, and a few months later the second sister, Elizabeth, followed her to the grave. Left as the eldest in the house, the nine-year-old Charlotte was forced to assume the duties of housekeeper and continue her education at home, devoting herself in silence and solitude to her literary bent.

In 1835 Charlotte took a post as a governess, but poor health and the unappealing life in a stranger’s house compelled her to give up this occupation. Charlotte planned to open a school together with her younger sisters, and in order to prepare for this undertaking she and her sister Emily decided to improve their knowledge of the French language and literature on the Continent; for this purpose they went to Brussels in 1842. Returning to their homeland, the sisters finally resolved to present the first fruits of their literary activity. In the spring of 1846 a small volume of their poems appeared under the pseudonyms Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne