The publication of Jane Eyre, introducing Charlotte Brontë’s unconventional heroine
How did Charlotte Brontë get Jane Eyre published?
Charlotte (pictured right, c1850) spent her childhood and adolescence writing fantasy sagas in collaboration with her siblings. Her first publication was a family project, too: a collection of poems self-published in 1846 by Charlotte, Emily and Anne under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
Charlotte failed to find a publisher for the first novel she wrote, The Professor; it was released posthumously in 1857. However, one publisher, George Smith, expressed an interest in her future efforts. She was already at work writing Jane Eyre, and sent it to Smith soon afterwards. It was published eight weeks later, on 19 October 1847.
What was the critical reception?
Many critics recognised that Jane Eyre was extraordinary, praising Brontë’s forceful style, the “flesh and blood” authenticity of her heroine, and the engrossing plot. There were, though, also detractors. Some condemned the novel as a radical political tract, attacking it on grounds of immorality and irreligion. Others objected to the romance plot, which they found coarse, animalistic and scandalous in its emphasis on “the rights of woman”.
How did the public react?
Jane Eyre was an immediate sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, becoming a bestseller; within six months of its first publication it was reprinted in second and third editions. The journalist Thomas Wemyss Reid later remarked that all of England seemed to be in a state of “Jane Eyre fever”.
Why did Charlotte choose to write under a male pseudonym?
After her real identity had been exposed, Charlotte claimed that she had adopted the male pseudonym Currer Bell because she was averse to celebrity, and because she knew that women’s writing encountered prejudice at the hands of reviewers and the reading public.
How did Charlotte’s work shape the literary world?
Jane Eyre created a vogue for audacious and unconventional heroines in fiction. The novel’s synthesis of Gothic and realistic elements provided a template for many subsequent writers who explored the darker aspects of childhood, the class system, heterosexual romance, and the relationship between Britain and its empire. Jane’s assertive-but-intimate first-person narration has had an enduring influence on modern literature, too.
Why should we remember the publication of Jane Eyre today?
Like the novel itself, the publication history of Jane Eyre resonates as a Cinderella story. Charlotte grew up in genteel poverty in rural Yorkshire; like Jane, she had worked as a governess and felt herself to be “poor, obscure, plain, and little”. The success of her novel transformed her into one of the world’s most celebrated writers.
Both Charlotte and Jane Eyre appeal to many readers as female outsiders whose worth was vindicated against the odds. Charlotte’s life and her most famous novel are more complicated than that fairytale allows, but Jane Eyre’s rise to cultural pre-eminence is nonetheless remarkable.
It remains one of the most beloved and widely read novels in the English language, and continues to inspire adaptations, rewritings, and critical debate to this day.