Charlotte Bronte\'s First Novel Entitled \"The Professor.\"

¶ … Charlotte Bronte's first novel entitled "The Professor." The paper describes the novel's basis, its narrator and key characters.

In addition to a description and a general assessment of the book, the paper includes fundamental analysis and interpretation of the literary work.

Positions such as how this novel describes Charlotte Bronte's personal feelings of passion, love and uncertainty are revealed throughout the material.

The Professor" is a novel written by Charlotte Bronte and published in 1857, a few years after her death. As Bronte's first novel, publishers rejected the book. It was available in print only after she died.

The story is based on Bronte's experiences as a student in Brussels in the 1840s.

The tale is narrated by a male character by the name of William Crimsworth. Crimsworth is an orphaned, yet educated man who becomes a teacher at a girls' school in Belgium.

Early in the story, Crimsworth is flirtatious with the headmistress of the school, Zoraide Reuter. Despite the situation, Crimsworth meets someone else, Frances Henri, a student-teacher at the school. Crimsworth falls in love with her.

The headmistress becomes very jealous of the relationship and causes a number of problems in the couple's relationship.

She continues to make sensual advancements, as well as manipulates the situation.

Crimsworth continues to resist the headmistress.

Finally, she gives up on him and marries the headmaster of a nearby boys' school. Crimsworth then resigns his position at the school. He pursues a more meaningful position at another institution, and then, is at last able to marry his love Frances.

General Assessment

The Professor" was, as previously mentioned in this paper, Charlotte Bronte's first novel, which perhaps explains why this novel is often considered as one of the less desirable pieces of her work. The book was published after her passing, when readers were already familiar with the author and had become fascinated by her writing.

Many critics refer to the novel as dreary or poor in quality. "A critic in 1857 wrote that it was "crude, unequal, and unnatural to a fault; it has all the unripe qualities of a bad first work." And indeed it is dreary and confusing, uninvolving and filled with minutiae, and suffers from many awkward and improbable devices, not the least of which is the choice of a male protagonist to tell a tale with many autobiographical aspects." (Edwards)

Analysis

Although "The Professor" may be considered as a weak addition to Bronte's portfolio of literary works, Bronte ultimately earned fame for her writings including the contribution of novels such as "Jane Eyre" and "Shirley."

Like her successful pieces, Bronte portrays in "The Professor" her personal encounters in relationships, personal struggles and the yearning for love.

As the novel relates, Bronte herself went to boarding school in Brussels in 1842 along with her sister Emily. While attending the school, Bronte fell in love with a married man, who was the head of the institution. The feelings that Bronte experienced were not mutual.

Because of this, Bronte spent a good deal of time in distress and pain over the situation.

In a very real sense Charlotte's life was spent in mourning, in a struggle against the grim realities which surrounded her -- abandonment, brutalization, emotional deprivation, death (during her life she was forced to confront the traumatic loss of her mother, her four sisters, and her brother) and the search for reality, for her own identity." (Cody)

Despite Bronte's troubles, she also represented in her writings great warmth and beauty. Her narratives in "The Professor" are often thought provoking and inspirational.

A stood awhile, leaning over a wall; and looking down at the current: I watched the rapid rush of its waves. I desired memory to take a clear and permanent impression of the scene, and treasure it for future years." (Bronte)

During the visit to Belgium in the novel, Bronte is particularly descriptive from the narrator's viewpoint as he first enters the area. "This is Belgium, reader. Look! don't call the picture a flat or a dull one -- it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld it." "What did I see?," Crimsworth asks himself on entering Belgium, and his answer reveals an artists view of a scene: "Green, reedy swamps; fields fertile, but flat, cultivated in patches that made them look like magnified kitchen-gardens; belts of cut canals, gliding slow by the roadside; painted Flemish farmhouses; some very dirty hovels; a grey, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops: not a beautiful, scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole route; yet to me, all was beautiful, all was more than picturesque." (Bronte)

Conclusion

The Professor" was an early attempt at publication and a preliminary representation of the writings of a future acclaimed author. Although it is not considered as one of Bronte's better literary works, "The Professor" represents for readers the effect of personal experiences in life influential to Bronte's writing.

Like the narrator in "The Professor," Bronte experienced early on the power of passion and love in the presence of insecurity and doubt.

Bronte's failed relationships and the experiences of her family's deaths played a toll upon her.

Bronte's mother died at a very early age. Later, between the years of 1848 and 1849 her brother, Branwell, died, followed by the deaths of her sisters, Emily and Anne.