To not hide from who I am, but to allow it into the light. To be open to the potential of new discoveries, and embracing — not hiding from — the fear and trepidation that accompanies each revelation. To be strong enough to recognize and embrace who I am, without denying what I am and what I feel. The imagination is at least the fruit of the experience; for the poet weaves with all that comes to his hand. But there are degrees of delicacy and nobility in the weaving. Edmond de Goncourt noted, as an artist—for the public—every detail of his brother’s death, and his own sensations. Charlotte conceived the sacred things of kinship more finely.

Brontë's friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell, while not particularly close, was significant in that Gaskell wrote the first biography of Brontë after her death in 1855. The step in contemplation is no hasty one; on the gentleman’s side at least, it has been meditated for many years, and I hope that in at last acceding to it, I am acting right; it is what I earnestly wish to do. My future husband is a clergyman. He was for eight years my father’s curate. He left because the idea of this marriage was not entertained as he wished. The following is excerpted from Life and Works of the Sisters Brontë(1899) by Mary A. Ward (sometimes writing as Mrs. Humphrey Ward), a 19th-century British novelist and literary critic. Is it the development of the Hebraist and Puritan element in the English mind—so real, for all its attendant hypocrisies—that has debarred the modern Englishman from the foreign treatment of love, so that, with his realistic masculine instinct, he has largely turned to other things? But, after all, love still rules “the camp, the court, the grove!” It shows how profoundly the fiery dæmonic element in Miss Brontë had answered to the like gift in Rachel; and it bears testimony once more to the close affinity between her genius and those more passionate and stormy influences let loose in French culture by the romantic movement.Lucy Snowe: The protagonist and narrator of Villette. Lucy is a plain, hardworking Protestant English girl. She is quiet, reserved and somewhat lonely, yet she longs for independence and a passionate love affair.

Peschier, Diana. 2005. Nineteenth-century anti-Catholic discourses: The case of Charlotte Brontë. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Rachel’s acting transfixed me with wonder, enchained me with interest, and thrilled me with horror … it is scarcely human nature that she shows you; it is something wilder and worse; the feelings and fury of a fiend.” The metaphors of storms and shadows occur over and over throughout the narrative, reflecting Lucy’s inner world as it describes the outer setting. The stormy nights are the ones in which new discoveries are made, new secrets come to light, and when she must internally struggle with herself and her life’s path. It also conveys the duress experienced by Charlotte, and the difficulties she had in writing Villettewhile grieving the deaths of her beloved sisters, Emilyand Anne. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted, dear faulty little man!” It may be true as Mr. Leslie Stephen contends, that—in spite of his relation to the veritable M. Héger—there are in him elements of femininity, that he is not all male. But he is none the less man and living, for that; the same may be said of many of his real brethren. She writes once to Mr. Williams of her depression “and almost despair, because there is no one to read a line, or of whom to ask a counsel. Jane Eyre was not written under such circumstances, nor were two-thirds of Shirley.”

As to Paul Emanuel, we need not repeat all that Mr. Swinburne has said; but we need not try to question, either, his place among the immortals: As a rule, so far, women have been poets in and through the novel-Cowper-like poets of the common life like Miss Austen, or Mrs. Gaskell, or Mrs. Oliphant; Lucretian or Virgilian observers of the many-colored web like George Eliot, or, in some phases, George Sand; romantic or lyrical artists like George Sand again, or like Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Here no one questions their citizenship; no one is astonished by the place they hold; they are here among the recognized “masters of those who know.” Villette ( / v iː ˈ l ɛ t/) is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional Continental city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin Héger after leaving Brussels in 1844. [61] Written in French except for one postscript in English, the letters broke the prevailing image of Brontë as an angelic martyr to Christian and female duties that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell. [61] The letters, which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Héger frequently appears not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, although they are complex and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an example of literary self-dramatisation and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil. [61]

No novel, moreover, that escapes obscurity and ugliness was ever freer from stereotyped forms and phrases. The writer’s fresh inventive sense is perpetually brushing them away as with a kind of impatience. The phrases come out new minted, shining; each a venture, and, as a rule, a happy one; yet with no effect of labour or research; rather of a careless freedom and wealth. Charlotte and Emily's Belgian essays, juvenilia The History of the Year and Tales of the Islanders, her Preface to Wuthering Heights. The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë by James Tully is a (very) speculative novel about sinister goings-on in the family. Adaptations

Polly Home/Countess Paulina Mary de Bassompierre: A 17-year-old English girl who is a cousin of Ginevra Fanshawe. She is first introduced to the story as a very young girl, who is called Polly. As a child, she was very fond of Graham Bretton. She grows to be a beautiful young lady who is delicate and intelligent. Upon meeting Graham again, their friendship develops into love, and they eventually marry. Lucy says of her, "She looked a mere doll," and describes her as shaped like "a model." She and Lucy are friends. Although Lucy is often pained by Polly's relationship with Graham, she looks upon their happiness without a grudge. What may be said to be the main secret, the central cause not only of her success, but, generally, of the success of women in fiction, during the present century? In other fields of art they are still either relatively amateurs, or their performance, however good, awakens a kindly surprise. Their position is hardly assured; they are still on sufferance.Mr. Smith had already given her warm praise for the first half of the story; and though both he and Mr. Williams made some natural and inevitable criticisms when the whole was in their hands, yet she had good reason to feel that substantially Cornhill was satisfied, and she herself could rest, and take pleasure—and for the writer there is none greater—in the thing done, the task fulfilled. In January 1853 she was in London correcting proofs, and on the 24th of that month the book appeared. I did wonder, how much of this is true of us? Don’t we change our demeanor and personalities based on those we are interacting with; aren’t we different around different people? If that is the case, then when are we truly ourselves? Is it with those we are only the closest to or are our true selves an amalgamation of the various parts we present to others? A struggle to balance reason and passion Sad and gentle words!—written under a grey sky. They imply a quiet, perhaps a final renunciation, above all a deep need of rest. And little more than a year from the date of that letter she had passed through marriage, through the first hope of motherhood—through death. It is as poets then, in the larger sense, and as poets of passion, properly so-called—that is, of exalted and transfiguring feeling—that writers like George Meredith, and George Sand, and Charlotte Brontë affect the world, and live in its memory. Never was Charlotte Brontë better served by this great gift of poetic vision than in Villette—never indeed so well. The style of the book throughout has felt the kindling and transforming influence. Koehler, Karin. 2018. Immaterial correspondence: Letters, bodies and desire in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. Brontë Studies 43 (2): 136–146.