"Jane Eyre" was published in 1847 under the androgynous pseudonym of "Currer Bell." The publication was followed by widespread success. Utilizing two literary traditions, the Bildungsroman and the Gothic novel, "Jane Eyre" is a powerful narrative with profound themes concerning genders, family, passion, and identity. It is unambiguously one of the most celebrated novels in British literature.
Born in 1816, Charlotte Bronte was the third daughter of Patrick Bronte, an ambitious and intelligent clergyman. According to Newsman, all the Bronte children were unusually precocious and almost ferociously intelligent, and their informal and unorthodox educations under their father's tutelage nurtured these traits. Patrick Bronte shared his interests in literature with his children, toward whom he behaved as though they were his intellectual equals. The Bronte children read voraciously. Charlotte's imagination was especially fired by the poetry of Byron, whose brooding heroes served as the prototypes for characters in the Bronte's juvenile writings as well as for such figures as Mr.
English: Title page, first edition, en:Jane Eyre.
English: North Lees Hall, Hathersage. Charlotte Br...
English: North Lees Hall and out buildings Otherwi...Rochester in Jane Eyre (2). Bronte's formal education was limited and sporadic - ten months at the age of 8 at Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School (the model for Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre), eighteen months from the age of 14 at Roe Head School of Miss Margaret Wooler (the model for Ms. Temple) (Nestor 3-4). According to Newman, Bronte then worked as a teacher at Roe Head for three years before going to work as a governess. Seeking an alternative way of earning money, Charlotte Bronte went to Brussels in 1842 to study French and German at the Pensionnat Heger, preparing herself to open a school at the parsonage. She seems to have fallen in love with her charismatic teacher, Constantin Heger. The experience seems on a probable source for a recurrent feature in Bronte's fiction: "relationships in...