Keep the Classics Alive; Author Spotlight

My first Author Spotlight shines upon

Charlotte Bronte.

The first novel of hers I read, is also the first one published, Jane Eyre.

The 1847 gothic melodrama broke ground by being written from a first-person female perspective.

She used the pen name Currer Bell, which kept her initials in tact, but hid the fact that she was a woman.

As people started questioning Bell’s gender, they also criticized her work, but that just boosted sales.

I absolutely love this book!

It takes turns you don’t see coming, and just when you think she’s tying up the ending with a shiny bow, she smacks you in the face with her character’s determination to keep her integrity no matter the cost. The last 100 pages are like a tiny novella within itself. Jane’s wit is untouchable, and while reading her story of strength and survival, a love story is unfolded, then folded back up only to open up again even more beautifully.

After I finished Jane Eyre, I wanted more, so I purchased a used copy of Shirley, her second published novel.

Written from the third person perspective, Shirley tells a tale about neighbors living in Yorkshire during the industrial depression of the early 1800’s.

Bronte takes a closer look at social issues surrounding this era through the personal stories of her characters who range from heiress to orphan girl.

It is a romance with a touch of tragedy as only Bronte can tell in a time when people more often married for their station in life than for love and happiness.

Before Shirley was published, the name was generally a man’s name, as the story goes, Shirley’s parents wanted a boy and gave her a boy’s name, but as popularity of the novel grew, so did the use of the name Shirley for girls.

While writing this novel, charlotte lost her brother Branwell and two sisters Emily and Ann to disease, her two younger sisters already dead from poor living conditions at the boarding school they attended which was inspiration for Janes Eyre’s Lowood School.

Charlotte returned to the first person perspective when she wrote Villette, her third published novel, and like Jane Eyre, she also used her own life experiences as inspiration.

One of Villette’s main themes is isolation as Bronte’s main character Lucy, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school.  Lucy finds the culture and religion very different from her own and withdraws herself, falling into depression.

Sadly, Charlotte wasn’t able to see her fourth published novel, The Professor, because it was released after her death, it was though, the first novel she’d written, it had been rejected by the publisher.

Charlotte Bronte also wrote a collection of juvenilia in the 1830’s under the pseudonym Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley, as well as a volume of poetry published jointly with her sisters Emily and Anne in 1846 titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

All three of the Bronte sisters have been my favorites so far since starting my quest of reading the classics.