Shirley and The Professor

FROM THE INTRODUCTION The ProfessorandShirleyhave always suffered from being the stable-mates ofJane EyreandVillette. In its timeJane Eyre's realism and honesty meant it was widely regarded as a 'dangerous book', whileVillette, as George Eliot wrote, was 'almost preternatural in its power'. TodayJane Eyreis still one of the most popular novels in the English language, whileVillettemaintains its position as an extraordinary portrait of the feminine psyche. Beside such race-horses,The Professor,a gentle love story set in a school in Brussels, andShirley,a novel of industrial strife in Yorkshire during the Napoleonic Wars, might look a little humdrum. Yet to those fascinated by the obscure clergyman's daughter who astounded the Victorian establishment, they make essential reading. Their heroines anticipate the revolutionary nature of their more celebrated sisters and the books boldly explore the themes ofJane EyreandVillette, particularly the question of how women can find happiness in a society inimical to their needs. Not only are they highly enjoyable Shirleyis richly comic, while Mrs Gaskell described Frances Henri as 'the most charming woman [she] ever drew' they also demonstrate that work-in-progress, the ongoing development of Charlotte Bronte as a writer. Written in 1846, after the novelist returned from that single visit abroad which was to have such an effect upon her creative powers,The Professorwas not to be published in her lifetime. Charlotte had spent two years in Brussels, from 1842 to 1844, being taught by a gifted literature professor, M. Constantin Heger. His wife ran the school in the Rue Isabelle where both Charlotte and Emily Bronte boarded as special students. Their aim was to brush up their French so that they might set up a boarding school of their own in their father's parsonage at Haworth, inWest Yorkshire. At a time when there were few jobs for women, opening a school for girls seemed a good solution to the problem of earning a living for the highly sensitive Brontes whose means were small. They had tried governessing and detested the social condescension it entailed. Emily, who disliked parting from her natural habitat, loathed the Heger school and left after a year. Charlotte, who had conceived what would become a passionate crush on the charismatic M. Heger, the only gifted teacher she had ever encountered, stayed for another year, inspired by his influence. Then she too left, having become practically ill from the intensity of her feelings. But the school plans were blighted by her brother Branwell's presence at home. Now a disgraced ex-tutor, he was rapidly descending into fatal alcoholism. Matters were further complicated when his adulterous relationship with his employer's wife, Mrs Robinson, forced Charlotte to confront the nature of her own feelings for M. Heger with whom she had attempted to carry on a correspondence, which his wife, at least, felt went beyond the bounds of ordinary friendship. It has been argued that Charlotte Bronte's famous yearning letters to M. Heger were themselves a form of literary creation. By 1845 when Heger's silence made it obvious there was to be no reply, the effect was to throw Charlotte back onto real artistic endeavour. Once again she began writing a book, but this time she was determined it should be published. Although being a professional writer had been a serious ambition since she was a young girl, it also seemed the only reasonably genteel way of earning a living left to her. Obsessed by literature from a very early age she had even written to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey for an opinion of her work when she waBrontë, Charlotte is the author of 'Shirley and The Professor' with ISBN 9780307268211 and ISBN 0307268217.