The Making of Charlotte Brontë

The novelist, who died at 38, has been called “the first historian of the private consciousness.”

How a controversial biography of the Jane Eyre author overcame accusations of slander from the novelist’s hellish former headmaster, her critics, and even her father to establish her enduring myth

By Graham Watson

Shortly before she became one of the 19th century’s most scrutinized women, Charlotte Brontë told a friend that if strangers happened to look at her once, they made sure never to make the same mistake again.

She meant it humorously, but the remark also reflects her long experience of feeling underestimated, ignored, or pushed aside. Today, though, she is remembered as confident, erudite, and fiercely ambitious. Legend has given her a stature that life rarely did.

Between these two states was a mass of repetition and amplification. Gossip was repeated in Victorian newspapers, reinforced by the claims of people READ ON