The Professor

By Charlotte Brontë, 1857

Beautiful as Pauline Borghese, she looked at the moment scarcely purer than Lucrece de Borgia

William Crimsworth flees a tedious life in England to reach the shores of Belgium. He becomes a “professor”, more precisely a teacher, in a girl school.

Here lays the first novel of Currer Bell. I do not think that it is the best she wrote. However I am impressed at how the authoress managed to make this 4th published book still enjoyable and original

1. To me, the novel was too short compared to the three others. I expected some elements to be developped a little more, like the relationship between the main character and his guardian angel Hunsden. At the same time, I expected the end to be shorter and sharper, like in “Jane Eyre”. I believe these two elements were hurdles for making the novel be published earlier

2. Apart from these points, I was charmed by C. Brontë's words as usual. It is full of poetry, for example when the characters are compared to the Isrealites of Moses on the way for Canaan, which is either England or Belgium. The French sentences are similarly worth reading when it comes to two-language dialogs, both tongue being rich and accurately developped.

3. Despite sharing a like plot with “Villette”, it is still original. The plot brings magic and romance in something repulsive at first glance: an industrial big city and normal lives. I finally would like to mention that it is the only novel from the perspective of a man. His psychology is not black/white but rather grey, making somehow the other characters, like Mademoiselle Henri, have their say in the matter.

#question What is your favourite author of the Victorian era?

By Emgaol - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10076334

Medicis