LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Razan AbdullahMunira AlʿArefe

*Course Instructor: Dr. Mona Al Sadhan

HER LIFEI. Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet and the

eldest of the three Brontë sisters. Her novels have become classics of English literature. She published her best known novel, Jane Eyre, under the pen name Currer Bell.

II. Charlotte was born in Thornton, west of Bradford. She was the third of the six children of Maria and Patrick Brontë. her family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth. Maria died of cancer, leaving five daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne plus a son, Branwell, to be taken care of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell.

III. In 1842 Charlotte and sister Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at a boarding school run by Constantin Heger. In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English. Their time at the school was cut short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842.

CON…I. In 1842 Charlotte and sister Emily

travelled to Brussels to enrol at a boarding school run by Constantin Heger. In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English. Their time at the school was cut short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842.

THE BRONTE'S SISTERS HOUSE

• HER WOKS / JANE EYRE

In August 1847 Jane Eyre: An Autobiography was published. It tells the story of a plain governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester. The book's style was innovative, combining naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective.

SHIRLEY

After Anne's death Charlotte resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief, and Shirley was published. The novel deals with themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in society. It was published in October 1849. Unlike Jane Eyre, Shirley is written in the third person and lacks the emotional depth of her first novel. Reviewers found it less shocking.

VILLETTE

Charlotte's third novel was her last. It was named Villette, which appeared in 1853. Its main themes include isolation, how such a condition can be born. Its main character, Lucy Snowe, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture and religion different from her own, and falls in love with a man whom she cannot marry.

The room where Charlotte loved to spend almost her whole day

DEATH Charlotte became pregnant soon

after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly. She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, aged only 38 .