Jane Eyre broke new ground in being written from an intensely first-person female perspective, and critics declared it a “sigh from the depths” or an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit. There was, however, a change in the critical reaction to Charlotte’s work once speculation over the gender of this “Currer Bell” began, with harsh judgments more readily made once it was suspected that the author may in fact be a woman.