Everything about Currer Bell totally explained
Charlotte Brontë (
April 21,
1816 –
March 31,
1855) was a
British novelist, the eldest of the three famous
Brontë sisters whose
novels have become standards of
English literature. Charlotte Brontë is best known for
Jane Eyre, one of the most famous of British novels.
Life
Charlotte Brontë was born in
Thornton,
Yorkshire,
England, the third of six children, to
Patrick Brontë (formerly "Patrick Brunty"), an
Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria Branwell. In April
1821 the
family moved a few miles to
Haworth, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate. Maria Branwell Brontë died of cancer on
15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of her sister 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'd 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 (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who died of
tuberculosis in May of
1826 soon after they were removed from the school.
At home in
Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children —
Branwell,
Emily and
Anne — began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell wrote stories about their country — Angria — and Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about theirs — 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,
Mirfield, from
1831 to
1832, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents,
Ellen Nussey and
Mary Taylor. During this period (1833), she wrote her novella
The Green Dwarf under the name of Wellesley. Charlotte returned as a teacher from
1835 to
1838. 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 travelled to
Brussels to enroll in a pensionnat run by Constantin Heger (1809 – 1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger (1814 – 1891). In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the pensionnat was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt who joined the family after the death of their mother to look after the children, 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 wasn't 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, Brontë 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 didn't like to declare ourselves women, because -- without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking wasn't what is called 'feminine' -- we'd a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we'd noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which isn't 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 of
chronic bronchitis and
marasmus exacerbated by heavy drinking in September
1848, although Charlotte believed his death was due to
tuberculosis. Emily and Anne both died of pulmonary tuberculosis 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. Her book had sparked a movement in regards to
feminism in literature. The main character,
Jane Eyre, in her novel Jane Eyre, was a parallel to herself, a woman who was strong. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she didn't 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."
(External Link
) 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.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë, the posthumous biography of Charlotte Brontë by fellow novelist
Elizabeth Gaskell, was the first of many biographies about Charlotte to be published. Though quite frank in places, Gaskell suppressed details of Charlotte's love for Heger, a married man, as being too much of an affront to contemporary morals and as a possible source of distress to Charlotte's still-living friends, father and husband (Lane 1853 178-183). Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Brontë, claiming, for example, that he didn't allow his children to eat meat. This is refuted by one of Emily Brontë's diary papers, in which she describes the preparation of meat and potatoes for dinner at the parsonage, as
Juliet Barker points out in her recent biography,
The Brontës. It was discovered that Charlotte wrote 20 manuscript pages of a book but died before she could finish; however another author,
Clare Boylan, took up the project and the novel was released under the title of
Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Bronte in 2003.
Novels
Poetry
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846)
Selected Poems of The Brontës, Everyman Poetry, (1997)Further Information
Get more info on 'Currer Bell'.
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