1816 – 1855
The eldest of the Brontë sisters, all of whom were writers.
A novelist who shook up the value judgements of her era by portraying love through the eyes of a woman.
A woman who declared her independence in a world of men.
She wrote under a pseudonym to evade the critics’ prejudices against women writers: Currer Bell, a name with the same initials as her own.
With Jane Eyre, she brought a new sense of honesty to the Victorian novel.
The story of a love affair between two people from different social classes, it was one of the first novels to stand up for women’s rights and freedoms.
It realistically reflected the oppression that resulted from societal norms, class distinctions and the patriarchy.
She was inspired by the events of her own life, by observing the people she encountered, by suffering and death; she wrote novels that contained hope for humanity.
She carried the flame of Romanticism into the Victorian age.
She fiercely criticised the prevailing mindset of Victorian England with heroines who rebelled against the roles assigned to them.
‘I am no bird,’ she wrote in Jane Eyre, ‘and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.’
