Charlotte Bronte was born on 21st April 1816 at Haworth, Yorkshire, the third daughter of the Rev. Patrick Brontë. Her early life was troubled (turbata)by the loss (perdita) of her mother (1821) and by the death of her two older sisters. In 1831 Charlotte attended (frequentò) the Roe Head school for one year and returned there in 1835 as a teacher. Between 1839 and 1841, she accepted the position of governess in various families, until she and her sisters Emily and Anne decided to open their own school (1842). So in 1842 Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to complete their studies, but only Charlotte remained there until 1844. As their project for founding a school proved a total failure (fu un fallimento), the sisters started publishing poetry and stories under the pseudonym of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Only two years later, in 1848, Charlotte and Ann visited their publishers (editori) in London, and revealed their true identities. In the same year their brother, Branwell Brontë, by now an alcoholic and a drug addict (drogato e alcolizzato), died, soon followed by Emily and Anne. In 1849 Charlotte visited London and began to move in literary circles, making the acquaintance (conoscenze), for example, of Thackeray and Mrs Gaskell. In 1854 she married Rev. A. B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth, against her father’s will (volere), but she died (1854) the following year while expecting a child. In 1857 Mrs. Gaskell’sLife of Charlotte Brontë was published. She wrote The Professor: A Tale (1857); Shirley, a social novel (1849); the mostlty autobiographical novel Villette (1853); but her masterpiece (capolavoro) is Jane Eyre : An Autobiography (1847), still written under the pseudonym of Currer Bell, which represents a first example of feminist novel as the heroine gets her own living (si guadagna da vivere) without being oppressed by male authority.
2013-04-20