She returned returns to Roe Head School in as a governess: for a time her sister Emily attended the same school as a pupil, but became homesick and returned to Haworth. Ann took her place from to In , Charlotte left Roe Head School.
In she accepted a position as governess in the Sidgewick family, but left after three months and returned to Haworth. In she became governess in the White family, but left, once again, after nine months. Upon her return to Haworth the three sisters, led by Charlotte, decided to open their own school after the necessary preparations had been completed.
In Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to complete their studies. After a trip home to Haworth, Charlotte returned alone to Brussels, where she remained until Upon her return home the sisters embarked upon their project for founding a school, which proved to be an abject failure: their advertisements did not elicit a single response from the public.
In these early writings, the children collaboratively created a complete imaginary world, a fictional West African empire they called Angria. Charlotte explained their interest in writing this way: "We were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had know from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary composition.
While this writing helped Charlotte improve her literary style, the Angria adventures are fantastical, melodramatic, and repetitive, contrasting with Charlotte's more realistic adult fiction. After her father had a dangerous lung disorder, he decided once again that his daughters should receive an education so they would be assured of an income if he died.
Shy and solitary, Charlotte was not happy at school, but she still managed to win several academic awards and to make two lifelong friends: Mary Taylor and Ellen Nussey. Although she was offered a teaching job at Roe Head, Charlotte declined the position, choosing to return to Haworth instead. Perhaps bored with the solitary life at Haworth and looking for an active occupation in the world, Charlotte returned to Roe Head in as a governess.
For her, governessing was akin to "slavery," because she felt temperamentally unsuited for it, and finally, following a near mental breakdown in , she was forced to resign her position. Unfortunately, governessing was the only real employment opportunity middle-class women had in Victorian England. Because the family needed the money, Charlotte suffered through two more unhappy governess positions, feeling like an unappreciated servant in wealthy families' homes; she didn't enjoy living in other people's houses because it caused "estrangement from one's real character.
In an attempt to create a job that would allow her to maintain her independence, Charlotte formed the idea of starting her own school at Haworth. To increase her teaching qualifications before beginning this venture, she enrolled as a student, at the age of twenty-six, at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels so she could increase her fluency in French and learn German.
Charlotte loved the freedom and adventure of living in a new culture, and formed an intense, though one-sided, passion for the married headmaster at the school: Monsieur Heger. After two years in Brussels, suffering perhaps from her love for Heger, Charlotte returned to England. The plan to open her own school was a failure, as she was unable to attract a single student. Instead, Charlotte began putting all of her energy into her writing. After discovering Emily's poems, Charlotte decided that she, Anne, and Emily should try to publish a collection of poems at their own expense.
In , they accomplished this goal, using the masculine pseudonyms of Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell because of the double standards against women authors. It seems that they had formed a pact as young women to grow old as spinsters together. The third novel written by Charlotte, although the second published was Shirley. When Charlotte commenced the work her sisters seemed in fine health, but by the mid point both Emily and Anne had tragically died.
This changed the course of the novel. Both Charlotte and her father had been furious when Arthur Bell Nicholls first proposed to her. Patrick thought she deserved better than a man who was his assistant curate, and he also worried who would look after him in his old age if his only remaining child left.
Patrick and Arthur seemed to have been reconciled, however, but on the day of the wedding in June he declared that he felt too ill to leave the house. Charlotte was instead given away by Margaret Wooler, the woman who had been her headmistress and then employer at Roe Head school.
The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth. Charlotte could see well in the dark, but not in the light Charlotte was very short sighted, taking after her father who in later life had to have his cataracts cut away without an anaesthetic. Charlotte was obsessed with the Duke of Wellington Just as young girls today may worship a pop star, Charlotte worshipped Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington.
Charlotte hated being a teacher - with a vengeance After spending a year there as a pupil, Charlotte was invited back to Roe Head to act as a teacher. Charlotte was advised to give up writing - because she was a woman From an early age, Charlotte and her sisters loved writing, and she went to the very top to get an opinion on her work. Charlotte was around four and a half feet tall Charlotte is a giant of literature but she was very diminutive in stature.
Charlotte fell in love with her married teacher At age 21 Charlotte, with Emily, left Yorkshire and travelled to Brussels, with the intention of learning languages that would help them set up their own school. Charlotte really did know a family called Eyre Charlotte often visited Ellen at Hathersage, where she frequently stayed with her brother.
Illustration from the second edition of 'Jane Eyre', Charlotte kept her writing from her own father Charlotte, like Anne and Emily, was a shy and secretive woman, and she kept the fact that she had written her novel even from her own father. Charlotte was given away at her wedding by her former headmistress Both Charlotte and her father had been furious when Arthur Bell Nicholls first proposed to her.
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