Charlotte Bronte's final masterpiece powerfully portrays a woman struggling to reconcile love, jealousy, and a fierce desire for independence.
Having fled a harrowing past in England, Lucy Snowe begins a new life teaching at a boarding school in the great capital of a foreign country. There, as she tries to achieve independence from both outer necessity and inward grief, she finds that her feelings for a worldly doctor and a dictatorial professor threaten her hard-won self-possession. Published in 1853, Charlotte Bronte's last novel was written in the wake of her grief at the death of her siblings. It has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, "Jane Eyre," as well as a striking modernity of psychological insight and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness.
About the Author
The eldest of the three Bront? sisters, Charlotte is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which was published under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Bront?'s works were revolutionary for their time, reflecting a truthfulness about love and relationships that was not common in Victorian-era England. While Jane Eyre was, and continues to be, her most popular work, Charlotte Bront? published numerous works during her short life, including juvenilia, poetry, and the novels Shirley and Villette. Charlotte Bront? died in 1855, outliving both of her sisters, Anne and Emily. Collectively, the Bront? sisters' novels are considered literary standards that continue to influence modern writers.
"Brontë’s finest novel."