Charlotte Bronte...Her Life

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire,

the third of the six Brontë children. In April 1820, Charlotte

moved with the family to Haworth. After her mother died in 1821,

Charlotte and the children were left in the care of their father and

aunt Elizabeth Branwell. In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with

three of her sisters; Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy

Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, which she

would later describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre. Its poor

conditions, Charlotte maintained, permanently affected her health

and physical development and hastened the deaths of her two

elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who both died of tuberculosis in

1825 soon after they were removed from the school.

At home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children,

Branwell, Emily, and Anne, began creating imaginary kingdoms and chronicling the lives

and struggles of their inhabitants. Charlotte and Branwell wrote stories about the country

of Angria, while Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about the country of Gondal.

The sagas were elaborate and convoluted (and still exist in part manuscripts) and

provided them with an obsessive interest in childhood and early adolescence, which

prepared them for their literary vocations in adulthood.

Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head school in Mirfield from 1831 to

1832, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary

Taylor. During this period she wrote the novella The Green Dwarf under the name of

Wellesley. Charlotte returned as a teacher in 1835. In 1839 she took up the first of many

positions as governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841.

In 1842 she and Emily traveled to Brussels to enroll in a pensionnat run by Constantin

Heger and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger. In return for board and tuition, Charlotte

taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the pensionnat was cut short when

their aunt Elizabeth Branwell died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte

returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the pensionnat.

Her second stay at the pensionnat was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick,

and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She finally returned to Haworth in January

1844 and later used her time at the pensionnat as the inspiration for some of The

Professor and Villette.

In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne published a joint collection of poetry

under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although the book failed to

attract interest (only two copies were sold), the sisters decided to continue writing for

publication and began work on their first novels. Charlotte continued to use the name

'Currer Bell' when she published her first two novels. Of this, she later wrote:

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer,

Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of

conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we

did not like to declare ourselves women, because - without at that time suspecting

that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' - we had a

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vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we

had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of

personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

Her novels were deemed coarse by the critics. Much speculation took place as to who

Currer Bell really was, and whether Bell was a man or a woman.

Charlotte's brother, Branwell, the only son of the family, died in September 1848.

His death was attributed to tuberculosis, which also claimed sisters Emily and Anne in

December 1848 and May 1849, respectively.

Charlotte and her father were now left alone. In view of the enormous success of

Jane Eyre, she was persuaded by her publisher to visit London occasionally, where she

revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle, becoming

friends with Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and G.

H. Lewes. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she

did not want to leave her aging father's side.

In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, and

became pregnant very soon thereafter. Her health declined rapidly during this time, and

according to Gaskell, her earliest biographer, she was attacked by "sensations of

perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness." Charlotte and her unborn child died

March 31, 1855. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis (tuberculosis),

but many biographers suggest she may have died from dehydration and malnourishment,

caused by excessive vomiting from severe morning sickness. There is also evidence to

suggest that Charlotte died from typhus she may have caught from Tabitha Ackroyd, the

Brontë household's oldest servant, who died shortly before her. Charlotte was interred in

the family vault in The Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haworth, West Yorkshire,

England.