The brontes

THEME: CHARLOTTE BRONTE JANE EYRE
PLAN

I. INTRODUCTION 3
II. MAIN PART 4
2.1. CHARLOTTE (1816-1855) EMILY (1818-1848) ANNE (1820-1849) 4
2.2. THE BIGGEST SURPRISE IN CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S "JANE EYRE" IS ITS UNROMANTIC HEROINE. BY JOYCE CAROL OATES 19
2.3.JANE EYRE CONTEXT 22
2.4. THE IMPOVERISHED GENTLEWOMAN 27
III. CONCLUSION 29
LIST OF USED LITERATURE 30


I. INTRODUCTION
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849), are well known as poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they originally published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories immediately attracted attention for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Grey, appeared in 1847 after many tribulations, again for reasons of finding a publisher. The packets containing the manuscripts often returned to the parsonage and Charlotte simply added a new address and did this at least a dozen times during the year. The first one was finally published by Smith, Elder & Co in London. The 23-year-old owner, George Smith, had specialised in publishing scientific revues, aided by his perspicacious reader William Smith Williams. After publishing Jane Eyre Smith remained faithful to the family. Emily and Anne's manuscripts were confided to Thomas Cautley Newby, who intended to compile a three-decker; more economical for sale and for loan in the "circulating libraries". The two first volumes included Wuthering Heights and the third one Agnes Grey. Both novels attracted critical acclaim, occasionally harsh about Wuthering Heights, praised for the originality of the subject and its narrative style, but viewed with suspicion because of its outrageous violence and immorality – surely, the critics wrote, a work of a man with a depraved mind.Critics were fairly neutral about Agnes Grey, but more flattering for Jane Eyre, which soon became a best-seller, despite some commentators denouncing it as an affront to morals and good mores.