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Jane Eyre, first published in 1847 as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell (Brontë’s pseudonym) listed as the editor. Widely considered a classic, it gave new truthfulness to the Victorian novel with its realistic portrayal of the inner life of a woman, noting her struggles with her natural desires and social condition. -
In her novel Shirley. Charlotte avoided melodrama and coincidences and widened her scope. Setting aside Maria Edgeworth and Sir Walter Scott as national novelists, Shirley is the first regional novel in English, full of shrewdly depicted local material—Yorkshire characters, church and chapel, the cloth workers and machine breakers…
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Villette, published in three volumes in 1853. Based on Brontë’s own experiences in Brussels, this tale of a poor young woman’s emotional trial-by-fire while teaching in a girl’s school in Belgium is one of the author’s most complex books, a fine example of psychological realism laced with Gothic romance. Depressed by the oppressive atmosphere of the school and unable to find an outlet for her turbulent emotions, Lucy Snowe suffers an inevitable nervous breakdown.