Born: April 21, 1816 | Died: March 31, 1855
Nationality: British | Genre: Gothic Fiction, Romanticism, Social Critique
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist whose fierce, interior voice helped redefine the heroine at the center of the 19th-century novel. Writing as “Currer Bell,” she fused Gothic atmosphere with psychological realism in works like Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, exploring desire, conscience, class, and the costs of independence. Her protagonists insist on moral agency and self-respect, turning love stories into arguments for dignity and choice.
Raised in the Haworth parsonage alongside her talented siblings, Brontë honed her craft early through vivid imaginary worlds and later by life experiences as a teacher and a governess, and during a formative stay in Brussels. She published Jane Eyre in 1847 to immediate acclaim, followed by bolder, more introspective novels. Though her life was brief, her uncompromising view of a woman’s inner life—and her ability to stage that struggle against social constraint—left a lasting mark on English literature.
Come! we’ll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit there together.
fromJane EyrebyThere is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
fromJane EyrebyLife appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.
fromJane EyrebyEvery atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still; … whatever your faults, they were not invented: I would not have a part of you altered, any more than I would have a single feature changed in my face.
fromJane EyrebyI ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.
fromJane EyrebyI am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed.
fromJane EyrebyYou think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.
fromJane EyrebyI care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
fromJane EyrebyLaws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this.
fromJane Eyreby