Charlotte Brontë
While Irish priest Patrick Brunty (later Brontë, 1777-1861) lived to age 84, neither his wife nor any of his six children exceeded 38. If his third child, Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) had not made visits away from their Yorkshire parsonage, to London and Brussels, perhaps she would have died as young as her siblings ~ the age expectancy in their village was only 24, due to contaminated water and open sewers. Amidst this squalor, however, Charlotte wrote a book, ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847), which beautifully mirrored her life and emotions, and put women’s viewpoints firmly in the literary canon.
With few employment options, Charlotte had become a teacher, then a governess, but disliked both. Meanwhile, following advice from publishers rejecting her first book, ‘The Professor’ (1857, published posthumously), she finished ‘Jane Eyre’ and it was an immediate success, surpassing the sales of her sister Emily‘s ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847). She hid her gender and authorship initially, as can be seen from the frontispiece (above), since female authors were disparaged.
‘Shirley’ (1849) and ‘Villette’ (1853) followed, She declined several marriage proposals but finally accepted her father’s assistant, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819-1906), another Irishman. They were happily married for just nine months before Charlotte suffered excessive morning sickness, from which she and their unborn baby died.
(Images LtoR: original frontispiece of ‘Jane Eyre’ and painting of Charlotte by her brother, Branwell, whose debts she paid, both at picryl.com / Public domain)