Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), daughter of the Irish Patrick Brontë, a clergyman of Yorkshire, was one of several literary Brontës in a family of four children, which included sisters Emily (Wuthering Heights) and Anne. Her mother died in 1821, and Charlotte and her siblings were placed in the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. The Brontë girls were then sent to a school for daughters of the clergy at Cowan Bridge, where they were treated so badly that Charlotte would later name it as the cause of death of her two eldest sisters in 1825, and the reason for her own poor constitution. The surviving children educated themselves at home in a rich fantasy life fed by the incredible quantity of books they read and the stories and magazines they circulated among themselves.

In 1831 and 1832 Charlotte attended Miss Woolers’ school at Roe Head, to which Charlotte would return a few years later as a teacher. In 1839 she was appointed governess of the Sidgwick family, and in 1841 she secured the same position with the White family. In 1842 Charlotte and her sister Emily went abroad to study languages in Brussels, but were called back by the death of their aunt. Charlotte returned to Brussels alone afterwards. In 1845, at the age of 29, Charlotte had a collection of the girls’ poetry published under the names of Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell. The collection received scarcely a notice at the time.

After a first novel was unsuccessful, Charlotte returned to writing more determined than ever and produced the immediately successful Jane Eyre in 1847. In 1848 the rising fame of the so-called Bell brothers brought prying eyes to the real authors behind them, and after an obscure publisher claimed them all to be the work of one author, the sisters were forced publicly to rectify the situation. Charlotte was unable to enjoy her success, however, as in the next year she lost three sisters, leaving her alone. Despite public knowledge of her identity, she continued to publish under the pseudonym of Currer. She married her father’s curate in 1854 and died a few months later in what were probably pregnancy complications.

Jane Eyre is the story of a poor orphan who grows up in a boarding school, in a situation modeled after that in Charlotte’s life. The story continues with her marriage aborted when she discovers her groom to be already secretly married, to a mentally sick woman. Jane flees and is rescued from death on the moors by a clergyman and his two sisters, who turn out to be Jane’s cousins. The four come into an inheritance, just like every penniless orphan in a stereotype 18th century novel, and Jane returns to visit her ex-fiancé to find him half-blinded by a fire which also killed his wife. The two marry and his sight slowly begins to regenerate. By the time that Thanhouser filmed Jane Eyre in 1910 it had been a famous classic for many decades.