The three sisters instead started on their literary career that they would become famous for. After being summarily dismissed by Madam Heger Charlotte and Emily returned to England, this time to mourn the death of their aunt Elizabeth and give up their dreams of creating their own school. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily traveled to Brussels to improve their language teaching abilities it was during this time that Charlotte fell in love with her tutor, Monsieur Heger, the first person to recognize her potential as a writer and most dreadfully for Charlotte, a married man. Tragically, the comparisons between heroine and author were not to end at their personal ambitions. Continuing to follow the same general story trajectory as Jane Eyre, Charlotte’s dream was to open up her own school where she and her sisters would teach. Charlotte Brontë would go on to attend, and eventually teach at Roe Head School before moving on to become a governess. While being taught at home Charlotte and her siblings wrote extensive works of juvenilia based in the fictional worlds of Gondal and Angria through these works, and by reading and imitating the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Charlotte and her sisters Anne and Emily would refine their writing and style.

“Maria and Elizabeth returned only to die in their turn, aged 11 and 10,” leaving Charlotte the eldest sister, and further intensifying the familial sense of agoraphobia as well as the closeness of the remaining siblings.

Consumption broke out at Cowan Bridge while the three Brontës were in attendance, and shortly after the outbreak, the four sisters were sent home. The death of their mother was only the first step towards seclusion for Charlotte the siblings were further isolated from their family when Charlotte and three of her sisters were sent to were sent to Cowan Bridge, a school for clergyman’s daughters that was so negligent that scholars believe it to be the inspiration behind Lowood School. Soon after Maria’s death the Brontë’s aunt Elizabeth Branwell became the maternal presence in the Brontë household. Charlotte Brontë, the third of six children, would soon experience the sense of downtrodden isolation of her heroine Jane Eyre, starting with the death of her mother after the birth of Charlotte’s youngest sibling. Charlotte Bronte was born on Apto parents, Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell in the parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

Jane eyre sisters