Victorian Women Novelists
In Victorian period, the view on women was around an image of women as both
inferior and superior to men. The rights and privileges of Victorian women were very limited for
both, the single and married. The educated class especially the writers appeared to stand against
the injustice law. In the middle of the Victorian era, a galaxy of women novelist came forward in
a procession headed by the Bronte sisters. Those women novelist ushered in a revolution in the
domain of the Victorian novel. The Victorian age saw the growth of liberalism, rise of
democracy, spread of education and above all the supremacy of the middle class. There arouse in
that age a legitimate demand for equal status of men and women in the society. Thus, the age
itself was developing a congenial atmosphere for liberation of women.
Unlike the novels of Jane Austen and earlier novelist who dealt with a society or a group
of people somewhat detachedly (free from bias), the Bronte sisters painted the sufferings of an
individual personality and presented a new conception of heroine as a woman of vital strength
and passionate feelings. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was particularly drawn, by experience as
well as by imagination, to the troubles of the unmarried and monetarily poor women. Without a
doubt, Charlotte Brontë was progressive in her beliefs. In a time when women were considered
little more than social adornments and bearers of offspring, Charlotte Brontë bravely
contradicted society through her writing. Her novels speak volumes for the oppressed woman;
thus, establishing Charlotte Brontë as one of the first modern women of her time. She
dramatizes those cases in Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853). Charlotte Brontë wrote under the
masculine pseudonym Currer Bell. She was received with great praise, and this is one of the
reasons that allowed her to write about the injustice on woman. Eventually, the position of
women in Victorian society became a major political issue; as a result, there appeared many
prominent women Victorian novelists, and some of the problems which women faced are
inevitably reflected in their work.
Although in our present day, it is somewhat expected, if not required, for people to raise
awareness of topics connected with the issues in society, it was not the case in the Victorian era.
It was not a place for women to criticize their status and it was definitely not a place for them to
do so publicly in the form of literature. Brontë, however, was a brave woman who was not afraid
to address the ‘Woman question’ in her work, and she did it so masterfully that her novels are up
to this date a representation of female strength and capability.
Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor, failed to find a publisher and was only published
after her death. Even after experiencing disappointment from her first novel being nine times
rejected, Charlotte decided not to abandon her idea to publish with the same enthusiasm as
before. Jane Eyre was completed in August 1847 and immediately sent to the very same
publishing company that rejected her first book with such helpful and encouraging comments -
Smith, Elder and Company. The story was accepted right away and before the end of the ear ran
to two editions and became of the year’s best sellers. It tells the story of a plain governess, Jane,
who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester. They
marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies
in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining naturalism with gothic
melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female
perspective.
Brontë started to work on her next novel, titled Shirley, immediately after her previous
novel Jane Eyre got published in 1847. In midst of writing this novel, her brother as well as her
both sisters died, which resulted in the change of the tone in this novel. The course of the story
changed into a dark and depressing excursion into the lives and minds of the heroes. The pain the
author transformed into the novel is most evident in chapter ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’ in
the second half of the novel. In this part of the book, readers can also notice the author shifts her
focus to the character of Shirley Keeldar, who was in fact based on her sister Emily Brontë.
In her last novel, Villette, Brontë again revisits some of the themes previously used in her
work. She gets back to the themes of isolation, religion, repression, searching for independence
and finding one’s own identity in difficult circumstances full of social obstacles. The structure
and narrative style of Brontë’s final novel marks her artistic development by its complexity,
experimentalism and sophisticated style.
Brontë started to write and think of authorship when she was only a child engaging in
plays with her siblings. She took her ambition seriously and produced a great number of juvenile
stories and poems while looking for an inspiration mainly in the works of famous writers of her
time, and thus slowly developing her own style. A crucial element for Brontë’s early artistic
development was the support of her father and the collaboration with her siblings who also spent
a lot of their time by writing and commenting on each other’s works which made it possible for
Emily and Anne to become writers as well. Charlotte Brontë would probably never achieve such
success in the literary world if it was not for her liberal upbringing, influence of her siblings and
the inspiring environment of the wild nature of the moors right behind her window.
Bibliography
List of works cited:
Albert, Edward. The History of English Literature. Great Britain: George G. Harrap, 1923. Print.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Harper Press, 2010. Print.
Edwards, Mike. Charlotte Brontë: The novels. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan,
1999. Print.
Victorian Women in Literature. Retrieved on 4th November 2018 from:
http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/revistadestiintepolitice/files/numarul54_2017/12.pdf
