Brontë, Charlotte "The Professor"

Brontë, Charlotte "The Professor" - 1857

This novel has been on my wishlist for quite a while. It was recommended to me by another blogger who, like me, has also lived in Brussels and from her I learned that they have a Brontë society there now. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about that when I lived there but they might have started this after my time.

Anyway, if you have not read anything by Charlotte Brontë, you definitely must have heard of Jane Eyre, her most popular book, probably the most popular one of all the books by any of the Brontë sisters.

I have yet to find a book by any of them that I don't like at all, they are all fascinating and gripping. Just as this one. I must admit, I might like it even more because it takes place in Brussels but it would have been just as interesting had the protagonist lived elsewhere.

What makes this book as interesting as her others, you have the feeling you are in the midst of the story, even though it took place almost two centuries ago. It is so lively. You can feel the problems of the protagonists, you understand how difficult it was for women in former times and how much as changed and how much hasn't.

Unfortunately, like Jane Austen, the Brontës all died far too early.

From the back cover:

"Charlotte Bronte's first novel, The Professor, is narrated from the viewpoint of an ambitious and self-made man.

Rejecting his aristocratic inheritance William Crimsworth goes to Brussels to find his fortune. He takes a job teaching at a boarding school for young ladies, where he begins a flirtation with Zoraide Reuter, who, out of jealousy, attempts to frustrate his courtship of Frances Henri, an attractive young woman determined to make her way in the world.

In The Professor Charlotte Bronte holds up to scrutiny the Victorian ideals of self-help and individualism. The result is an unusual love story, and a novel profoundly critical of a society in which the relationships between men and women are reduced to power struggles."

#ThrowbackThursday. Jane Eyre

 

Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847

If you are a fan of English classics (like me), "Jane Eyre" is a definitive must.

Charlotte Brontë has created a wonderful, strong young woman. If she had lived today, she certainly would have gone exploring and conquering the world.

The book is  easy to read, easy to walk into.

We discussed this in our international book club in January 2012.

Read my original review here. 

Brontë, Charlotte "Shirley" - 1849

 

Brontë, Charlotte "Shirley" - 1849

This is my tenth Classic Spin and we were given #2.

One cannot read anything by Charlotte Brontë without comparing it to "Jane Eyre". Whilst that novel was about a poor girl with no relatives to help her, the poor girl in this story has an uncle who raises her. And cousins who like her. And a rich friend. So, a completely different story, one could say.

However, Shirley and her friend Caroline also show us the situation of women in the 19^th century just as well as Jane Eyre. The story might not be as dramatic but it certainly is interesting. Charlotte Brontë shows quite a bit of humour in her narrative. Still, not my favourite.

From the back cover:

"Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on 'something real and unromantic as Monday morning.' Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.

A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Brontë's literary talent. 'Shirley is a revolutionary novel,' wrote Brontë biographer Lyndall Gordon. 'Shirley follows Jane Eyre as a new exemplar but so much a forerunner of the feminist of the later twentieth century that it is hard to believe in her actual existence in 1811-12. She is a theoretic possibility: what a woman might be if she combined independence and means of her own with intellect. Charlotte Brontë imagined a new form of power, equal to that of men, in a confident young woman [whose] extraordinary freedom has accustomed her to think for herself.... Shirley [is] Brontë's most feminist novel'."

Here are all the books on my original Classics Club list.
And here is a list of all the books I read with the Classics Spin.

Brontë, Anne "Agnes Grey"

Brontë, Anne "Agnes Grey" - 1847

Anne Brontë, the youngest and lesser known of the three Brontë sisters. I have no idea why because her stories are just as great as those of her sisters. If not better. They are more down to earth, in my opinion.

There are some parallels to the story of Jane Eyre who works as a governess just as Agnes Grey does. That is probably because it was what the Brontë sisters experienced themselves. Agnes Grey is partly autobiographical, Anne Brontë added a lot of her own life here.

You can tell Anne is the daughter of a pastor, just as Jane Austen was, another parallel to a great author.

We learn about the hard life of a governess. If parents don't really want to be involved, want to discipline their children but also don't want others to discipline them but want those others to teach their children, you are always the piggy in the middle. How is the poor governess to instill the love of learning in children who are not told to follow the teacher? I know that teachers have a similar problem nowadays with parents who think their kids are little angels and little Einsteins at the same time while at the same time … well, let's not go there.

What a shame she died so young. I loved "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" as much as I loved this novel. Would have been great to be able to read more of her writings.

From the back cover:

"When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë's first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society."

Brontë, Charlotte "Villette"

Brontë, Charlotte "Villette" - 1853

I really loved this novel. As a fan of Jane Austen and someone who read all her novels and pamphlets, I am always on the lookout for more literature like hers. I think the Brontë sisters belong to the next best thing. I had not read "Villette" before and might not have come across it if I hadn't read "Becoming Jane Eyre" by Sheila Kohler.

It might be a little hard if you don't speak French because a lot of the conversations are held in French but there is a translation in the back of the book (at least in my edition but I would hope it's in all of them) and it's totally worth going through it anyway.

The novel is not just about a young girl who lost her family and has to look after herself, not easy at a time where the only decent way for women to keep alive is to get married. But Lucy is not someone who gives up easily, who gives in to her despair. She goes abroad and hopes to find something. And she gets rewarded for her courage. Her life still isn't easy but at least she knows she will not starve. And she finds some wonderful friends who stand by her.

The writing is very well done, the characters described perfectly. Apparently, Charlotte Brontë used a lot of material from her own life, so this can be seen as an autobiographical rendering of her own life in Brussels. This makes the story even more interesting.

There is only one question that gets no answer. Why is Lucy not telling anything about her family, her background? We don't learn anything about her before she turns up and is already in position where she needs to fend for herself.

There is not a lot more I can say about the book without spoiling the story for new readers. If you have read Villette and would like to talk about it, please, let me know.

If you liked "Jane Eyre", you will like this novel, as well. I will certainly read Charlotte Brontë's other novels.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Based on Charlotte Brontë's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, Villette is a moving tale of repressed feelings and subjection to cruel circumstance and position, borne with heroic fortitude.

Rising above the frustrations of confinement within a rigid social order, it is also a story of a woman's right to love and be loved."

Or: "With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette.

There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emmanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully moving study of isolation and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances."

Pool, Daniel "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew"

Pool, Daniel "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist - the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England" - 1993

Even though this book is a non-fiction one, the first part reads like a novel. If, like me, you love your English classics, especially Jane Austen, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins and similar authors, this is the book for you. It's not just about food but, as the second part of the title already suggests, about every important or not so important fact about life in the 19th century in England. If you always wanted to know how they play whist, what a Rear Admiral of the White is, why the ladies need all sorts of clothing that we are not aware of today and why Mr. Collins in Pride & Prejudice has to inherit the Bennett estate rather than the daughters of the family, this book gives you all the explanations.

The authors of that era wrote, same as most authors of any era, for their contemporaries. After all, they were the ones who would pay for their work. They didn't want to hear explanations about the food they ate or the celebrations they had, they already knew the background. Now you can, too. I have read a lot of that literature and about the background, so I had learnt a lot before I picked up this book but I never found a piece that was as explicit as this one. It has so many details.

Daniel Pool has done a lot of research and came up with a great book about that time of life in England. Even though he wrote this for Americans in the first place (and it does come up quite frequently), it is also interesting for the rest of us. While the first part is divided into chapters where everything from politics and public life up to customs and rituals are explained in a narrative form, the second part is a dictionary, a reference book that you can always go back to and check out the exact job description of a scullery maid or what the difference was between a physician and an apothecary. And is a baron more than a marquis or less (he is lower) and what on earth is the difference between a curate and a perpetual curate? You will find all the answers to those questions you never asked yourself in this book.

Any work about everyday life in Regency or Victorian England couldn't be more fascinating. A great companion to your English classics.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover: 

 

"For every frustrated reader of the great nineteenth-century English novels of Austen, Trollope, Dickens, or the Brontës who has ever wondered whether a duke outranked an earl, when to yell "Tally Ho!" at a fox hunt, or how one landed in "debtor's prison," here is a "delightful reader's companion that lights up the literary dark" (The New York Times). 

This fascinating, lively guide clarifies the sometimes bizarre maze of rules, regulations, and customs that governed everyday life in Victorian England. Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the "plums" in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life -- both "upstairs" and "downstairs." 

An illuminating glossary gives at a glance the meaning and significance of terms ranging from "ague" to "wainscoting," the specifics of the currency system, and a lively host of other details and curiosities of the day."

Fforde, Jasper "The Eyre Affair"

Fforde, Jasper "The Eyre Affair" (Thursday Next 1) - 2001

I discovered this book because one of our book club members recommended it as a companion to our book club read "Jane Eyre". What a fantastic suggestion.

It is so difficult to put a label on this, it's' a detective story, a thriller, classic reading, alternate history, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, philosophy, religion, a love for word play, weird names, language (he even mentions Esperanto), satire, even a little romance mixed in, you name it, it's in here.

I loved his love for language, his word play. The funniest names appear. Not only is our heroine called Thursday Next, her boss is called Braxton Hicks, she works with Bowden Cable and Victor Analogy, then there is Paige Turner, and we don't want to forget the evil guys Jack Schitt as well as Acheron Hades and his brother Styx (I've been wondering what their father's name would be). With the help of a sort of "time machine", the heroine ventures into a classic novel and helps rewrite the end.

Hilarious! The Rocky Horror Picture Show makes its appearance as a Richard III play, there is a Global Standard Deity religion, various fans of classic authors carry out their feuds, one funny idea chases the other.

The advantage of alternate history - you don't have to be accurate. The disadvantage of science fiction - you have to be consequent. Jasper Fforde manages to combine the two and make the most interesting plot out of this. I especially enjoyed the many allusions to classic literature. Surreal.

I would definitely suggest to read "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë before this book. Not only is this one certainly more interesting if you've read the original but it also contains a lot of spoilers, you really don't want to know the end of the novel before you embark on it.

Still, I loved the book and will explore Thursday's' adventures further in "Lost in a Good Book", "The Well of Lost Plots", "Something Rotten", "First Among Sequels", "One of our Thursdays is Missing" and "The Woman Who Died a Lot".

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of 'Jane Eyre'. In this world there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, a great interest in all things literary - and a woman called Thursday Next. 

In this utterly original and wonderfully funny first novel, Fforde has created a fiesty, loveable heroine and a plot of such richness and ingenuity that it will take your breath away."

Rhys, Jean "Wide Sargasso Sea"

Rhys, Jean "Wide Sargasso Sea" - 1966

Same as "Becoming Jane Eyre", I read this when our book club decided to read "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë this year, just as I had reread it a couple of months ago.

"Wide Sargasso Sea" is considered a "prequel" to "Jane Eyre", what happened to Mr. Rochester in his first marriage in the Caribbean, how did the marriage come about and how did it end up in such a dreadful way.

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica, so she knows quite something about life in the "West Indies". I really enjoyed learning about the people there at that time. Even though you know where it all leads (if you have read "Jane Eyre"), it still is a very exciting tale of love and love lost, different cultures clashing, highly recommendable.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Her grand attempt to tell what she felt was the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith in Penguin Classics.

Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.
Jean Rhys (1894-1979) was born in Dominica. Coming to England aged 16, she drifted into various jobs before moving to Paris, where she began writing and was 'discovered' by Ford Madox Ford. Her novels, often portraying women as underdogs out to exploit their sexualities, were ahead of their time and only modestly successful. From 1939 (when Good Morning, Midnight was written) onwards she lived reclusively, and was largely forgotten when she made a sensational comeback with her account of Jane Eyre's Bertha Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea, in 1966."  

Kohler, Sheila "Becoming Jane Eyre"

Kohler, Sheila "Becoming Jane Eyre" - 2009

An interesting novel based on the life of  Charlotte Brontë, especially while writing "Jane Eyre". The author transports us back into the time the book was written and shows how it grows with  Charlotte Brontë's experiences. But Sheila Kohler also addresses the problems of her sisters and the whole family.

As always when I read novels about this period, I am made aware of the chances women had it that society. None. And that must have been especially hard for intelligent women. This still is one of my favourite period and place of literature, England in the 19th century, there is something to it, despite all the negative sides it has.

Anyway, the novel was well written, obviously well researched. I hadn't come across the name of the author before, only found it because of the title, especially when I was sure it is NOT one of those dreadful "sequels" that people write hundreds of years later.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent. So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its centre are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre."

There is a very good "prequel" to "Jane Eyre", though: Rhys, Jean “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Brontë, Anne "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"

Brontë, Anne "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" - 1848

I love classics. I think of all the Brontë novels, this is my favourite. It reminds me of Jane Austen, though in a different direction.

The novel is exciting from the beginning. The description of the mysterious woman moving into Wildfell Hall, the suspicious neighbours, the generous landlord ... everything is quite interesting already. Then she disappears and the mystery gets even bigger.

The style of the novel is extraordinary. Various authors of that time have used this way, describing the story through various narrators and therefore having the reader always know more than the protagonists.

I like that style. It must be hard for the author to change the writing style throughout the novel and not lose track of the story. But it's great for the reader. The suspension gets even higher. You feel for Gilbert but you feel even more for Helen and her little boy.

What a life those women had to lead. Am I glad I live in this time and age.

Even though she is less famous than her sister Charlotte and Emily, I still prefer this novel to "Jane Eyre" and definitely to "Wuthering Heights".

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal. It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdon, the mysterious ‘tenant’ of the title, and her dissolute, alcoholic husband. Defying convention, Helen leaves her husband to protect their young son from his father’s influence, and earns her own living as an artist. Whilst in hiding at Wildfell Hall, she encounters Gilbert Markham, who falls in love with her.

On its first publication in 1848, Anne Brontë’s second novel was criticised for being ‘coarse’ and ‘brutal’. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall challenges the social conventions of the early nineteenth century in a strong defence of women’s rights in the face of psychological abuse from their husbands."

Brontë, Emily "Wuthering Heights"

Brontë, Emily "Wuthering Heights" - 1847

"Wuthering Heights".  I love classic books. I love English classic books. I love English classic books from the 19th century. I love the Brontë sisters.

I just don't like this novel. I'm sorry. I would love to like it and I am sure there are novels from that era that I have liked because they were so much like the books I like. I just can't with this one.

Where do I start? I love the moors. I grew up in a moorish country. So, that can't be it. The story between Catherine and Heathcliff is interesting, at least at the beginning.

I'm just not into ghost stories. Not that I'm afraid of ghosts, you can't be afraid of something that you don't believe in. So, sorry Ms. Brontë but you were off to a good start, had a nice plot going there and then you "blew" it.

I know a lot of people will disagree with me but that's just how I feel.

I read "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Brontë, some wonderful creations. Just didn't like this one.

From the back cover:

"Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.

Emily Brontë's only novel, a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence, the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights is the definitive edition of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor. In this edition, a new preface by Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth, looks at the ways in which the novel has been interpreted, from Charlotte Brontë onwards. This complements Pauline Nestor's introduction, which discusses changing critical receptions of the novel, as well as Emily Brontë's influences and background.

Emily Brontë (1818-48), along with her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, was one of the most significant literary figures of the 19th century. She wrote just one strikingly innovative novel, Wuthering Heights, but was also a gifted and intense poet."

Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre"

Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847

If you are a fan of English classics (like me), "Jane Eyre" is a definitive must.

Charlotte Brontë has created a wonderful, strong young woman. If she had lived today, she certainly would have gone exploring and conquering the world. But she doesn't live now. She is an orphan in Victorian England  who lives with an aunt who doesn't like her. After attending a school, she has to work as a governess for the children of Mr. Rochester.

But I don't want to give away too much, this is where the story starts.

If you like this story and writing, I can also recommend Charlotte's sister Anne's books (e.g. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"). Her novels are just as interesting and well written. I did not like Emily Brontë's book "Wuthering Heights", even though that is a very well liked and famous classic, as well.

Books about and/or related to the book:
Fforde, Jasper "The Eyre Affair"
Kohler, Sheila "Becoming Jane Eyre"
Rhys, Jean "Wide Sargasso Sea"

In the meantime, the novel was chosen and discussed in our book club.

This is what we talked about:
The book was suggested because our member said she reads it every couple of years. I think we were all very grateful that she suggested it because everybody really liked it. Some didn't like the part in school very much but we are aware that this is how it was at the time. The idea of charity for its own sake, because people want to help someone, only started recently.

We found Jane very mature for her age, again, probably the different time made children grow up quicker, especially if they had to fend for themselves. Most of us did not understand how she could go back to her aunt and forgive her. She surely showed a lot of strength there.

We also agreed that Charlotte Brontë was a fabulous feminist, willing to chance the future, writing a book at a time where women were not supposed to write those kind of books.

We were also told about a Turkish film about Jane Eyre, the story set in Turkey. Apparently, it changed the making of Turkish films.

Someone said the book was easy to read, easy to walk into. Again, we all agreed.

We discussed this in our international book club in January 2012.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2023.

From the back cover:

"Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity.She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than Victorian society traditionally allowed.

With a heroine full of yearning, the dangerous secrets she encounters, and the choices she finally makes, Charlotte Bronte's innovative and enduring romantic novel continues to engage and provoke readers."