《簡愛》的開頭並非宏大的愛情故事，而是以寒冷的天氣、緊閉的房門和一個孤獨的孩子為開端。從第一頁起，夏洛蒂·勃朗特就邀請我們進入一個情感並不喧囂卻又深沉的世界，一個痛苦在沉默中默默承受、最激烈的戰鬥發生在人心深處的世界。閱讀《簡愛》與其說是跟隨一個故事，不如說是在聆聽一個人在即將熄滅的爐火旁輕聲傾訴她的人生。
簡在里德家嬌小而不受待見，在偽裝成管教的殘酷環境中長大。著名的「紅房間」場景不僅是童年恐懼的瞬間，更是小說中簡第一次反抗的宣言。簡的恐懼是真實的，但她拒絕接受不公義也是真實的。即使是孩童時期，她也幾乎是本能地感受到尊嚴的重要性。勃朗特在這裡做了一件了不起的事：她賦予一個貧窮、平凡、孤兒女孩以道德深度，並堅持認為她的內心世界與任何富有英雄的冒險經歷都同樣重要。這種堅持在故事結束後仍久久縈繞在我們心頭。
簡搬到洛伍德後，苦難仍在繼續，但她的成長也隨之而來。飢餓、寒冷和失去親人塑造了她，卻並未使她心腸變硬。海倫·伯恩斯的死是維多利亞時代文學中最令人心碎的靜謐時刻之一。海倫平靜地接受苦難，與簡對正義的強烈渴望形成鮮明對比。勃朗特透過她們兩人探討了面對痛苦的兩種截然不同的反應──忍耐與反抗。簡並沒有變得聖潔，而是變得平凡。這種平衡正是這部小說的靈魂所在。
當桑菲爾德莊園出現在故事中時，小說籠罩著一層哥德式的氛圍——霧氣瀰漫的庭院、怪異的笑聲、陰暗的走廊。愛德華·羅切斯特的出現並非英俊的童話英雄，而是一個受傷而躁動不安的男人。他們的對話中充滿了平等，這在當時是罕見而激進的。簡並非被財富或地位所吸引，而是被認可。羅切斯特看到了她的內心，而簡則要求被當作一個完整的人來看待。 「我不是一隻鳥，」她宣告道。在那一刻，《簡愛》不僅成為一部愛情故事，更成為一份關於情感與道德獨立的宣言。
然而，勃朗特拒絕將愛情描繪得輕鬆或令人感到舒適。伯莎梅森的出現以殘酷的力量粉碎了浪漫的幻想。簡決定離開羅徹斯特──儘管她深愛著他──是小說中最具震撼力的道德抉擇之一。她順從的不是社會，而是自己的良知。離別的痛苦如同傷口般揮之不去；讀者能感受到她在荒原上的孤獨，她瀕臨崩潰的痛苦，以及她默默地拒絕放棄自尊。勃朗特暗示，愛情絕不能以犧牲靈魂為代價。
小說的結局，經歷了時間和苦難的洗禮，顯得來之不易，而非矯揉造作。羅徹斯特的失明和簡的獨立使他們之間重新獲得了平衡。他們的重逢不僅是激情的勝利，更是忍耐、成長和彼此謙遜的勝利。簡愛不再是以依附於主人的家庭教師的身份回歸，而是以平等夥伴的身份——在經濟上、道德上、情感上——與主人公平起平坐。
《簡愛》歷久不衰的原因在於它的親密感。它直接觸動了那些曾經感到被忽視、被沉默或被低估的讀者。它的懷舊之情不僅源自維多利亞時代的背景，更源自於其真誠的情感──這種情感讓我們想起年少時的自己，默默渴望被理解。夏綠蒂·勃朗特塑造了一位不征服世界，卻拒絕被世界征服的女主角。正是在這種靜默的抵抗中，《簡愛》繼續以溫柔、熾烈而又令人難忘的方式，觸動著讀者的心靈。
《艾格妮絲·格雷》是安妮·勃朗特的小說，於1847年首次出版。這部小說大量取材自個人經歷，安妮·勃朗特創作此書旨在展現19世紀眾多從事家庭教師工作的女性，她們因身份而遭受日常的虐待。這部小說反映了艾格尼絲·格雷成為家庭教師後所面臨的種種困境和挑戰，包括孤立無援、屈從於家庭的壓迫以及被她所服務家庭的輕蔑。
愛爾蘭小說家喬治·摩爾盛贊《艾格尼絲·格雷》為“英語文學中最完美的散文敘事作品”，並將安妮的文風與簡·奧斯汀相提並論。這部小說以其簡潔樸實的散文風格而備受讚譽，這種風格以一種溫和而富有韻律的方式推動著故事發展，不斷激發讀者的好奇心。
安妮·勃朗特與姐妹之間複雜的關係以及她作為家庭教師的不幸經歷被認為是《艾格尼絲·格雷》創作的靈感來源。小說以引人入勝的個人視角展現了維多利亞時代未婚受過教育的女性的困境：對她們而言，成為家庭教師是唯一體面的職業。
《艾格妮絲·格雷》是一部飽含個人情感的小說，反映了安妮·勃朗特對家庭教師待遇的看法以及她虔誠的宗教情懷。它觸及了道德行為、道德責任、個人正直和生存等議題。
這部小說被公認為傑作，具備所有傑作應有的品質和風格。
Jane Eyre does not begin like a grand romance; it begins with cold weather, a closed door, and a lonely child. From its very first pages, Charlotte Brontë invites us into a world where emotions are not loud but deeply felt, where pain is endured in silence, and where the strongest battles are fought within the human heart. Reading Jane Eyre feels less like following a story and more like listening to someone quietly confess their life to you by a fading fire.
Jane, small and unwanted in the Reed household, grows up surrounded by cruelty disguised as discipline. The famous Red-Room scene is not just a moment of childhood terror; it is the novel’s first declaration of rebellion. Jane’s fear is real, but so is her refusal to accept injustice as natural. Even as a child, she feels—almost instinctively—that dignity matters. Brontë does something remarkable here: she gives moral depth to a poor, plain, orphaned girl and insists that her inner life is as important as any wealthy hero’s adventures. This insistence stays with us long after the scene ends.
As Jane moves to Lowood, suffering continues, but so does growth. Hunger, cold, and loss shape her, yet they do not harden her heart. The death of Helen Burns remains one of the most quietly devastating moments in Victorian literature. Helen’s calm acceptance of suffering contrasts with Jane’s fierce need for justice, and between them, Brontë explores two responses to pain—endurance and resistance. Jane does not become saintly; she becomes human. That balance is the soul of the novel.
When Thornfield enters the story, the novel takes on a Gothic glow—misty grounds, strange laughter, shadowed corridors. Edward Rochester arrives not as a handsome fairy-tale hero but as a wounded, restless man. Their conversations crackle with equality, something rare and radical for its time. Jane does not fall for wealth or status; she falls for recognition. Rochester sees her mind, and Jane demands to be seen as a whole person. “I am no bird,” she declares, and in that moment, Jane Eyre becomes not only a love story but a manifesto for emotional and moral independence.
Yet Brontë refuses to make love easy or comforting. The revelation of Bertha Mason shatters romance with brutal force. Jane’s decision to leave Rochester—despite loving him deeply—is one of the novel’s most powerful moral acts. It is not society she obeys, but her own conscience. The pain of that departure lingers like a wound; readers feel her loneliness on the moors, her near collapse, her quiet refusal to surrender her self-respect. Love, Brontë suggests, must never come at the cost of one’s soul.
The novel’s ending, softened by time and suffering, feels earned rather than indulgent. Rochester’s blindness and Jane’s independence restore balance between them. Their reunion is not a triumph of passion alone, but of endurance, growth, and mutual humility. Jane returns not as a dependent governess but as an equal partner—financially, morally, emotionally.
What makes Jane Eyre so enduring is its intimacy. It speaks directly to readers who have felt overlooked, silenced, or underestimated. Its nostalgia lies not only in its Victorian setting but in its emotional honesty—the kind that reminds us of our younger selves, quietly longing to be understood. Charlotte Brontë gives us a heroine who does not conquer the world, but who refuses to let the world conquer her. And in that quiet resistance, Jane Eyre continues to speak—softly, fiercely, and unforgettable—to the hearts of its readers.
"Agnes Grey" is a novel by Anne Brontë, first published in 1847. The novel draws heavily from personal experience, as Anne Brontë wrote it to represent the many 19th-century women who worked as governesses and suffered daily abuse as a result of their position. The narrative reflects the struggles and challenges faced by Agnes Grey as she becomes a governess, dealing with isolation, subjugation, and the disdain of the families she serves.
The Irish novelist George Moore praised "Agnes Grey" as "the most perfect prose narrative in English letters," comparing Anne's prose to that of Jane Austen. The novel has been admired for its simple prosaic style, which propels the narrative forward in a gentle yet rhythmic manner, continuously leaving the reader wanting to know more.
Anne Brontë's complex relationship with her sisters and her unhappy career as a governess are considered influences in writing "Agnes Grey". The novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society.
"Agnes Grey" is a deeply personal novel, reflecting Anne Brontë's views on the treatment of governesses, as well as her passionate religious sympathies. It touches on issues of moral behavior, moral responsibility, and individual integrity and survival.
The novel has been recognized as a masterpiece, possessing all the qualities and style of a Jane Austen title. Anne Brontë's brave voice resonates during one of the most prejudiced and patriarchal times of English history, making "Agnes Grey" as feminist in nature as it is brave.
Agnes Grey: [ad] https://amzn.to/3SO3dUU
朗特姊妹的世界 Charlotte Brontë. The Brontës:The Spinster Agenda. , The Bronte Myth. Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights/Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
Oxford World's Classics
To commemorate the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë's birth, we will be honoring the Brontë sisters as the July #ClassicsInContext Authors of the Month.
The three sisters Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48), and Anne (1820–49) were all born at Thornton, Yorkshire, the daughters of an Irish-born clergyman who had changed the spelling from Brunty. Their novels include two masterpieces: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847). The sisters’ religious upbringing and intellectual gifts, combined with their emotional and spiritual qualities, place them among the most popular novelists of all time.
Follow us on Twitter @OWC_Oxford to learn more throughout the month!朗特姊妹的世界 Charlotte Brontë. The Brontës:The Spinster Agenda. , The Bronte Myth. Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights/Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
The British Library
Charlotte Brontë’s defining novel, Jane Eyre, was first published #onthisday in 1847.
In Jane Eyre, Brontë created ‘a heroine as plain, and as small as myself, who’, she told her sisters Emily and Anne, ‘shall be as interesting as any of yours’.
See the original manuscript on #DiscoveringLiterature and explore what it reveals about the celebrated author and her work http://bit.ly/2cGqAZa
“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
―from VILLETTE by Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë's JANE EYRE was first published in England on this day in 1847.
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
―from JANE EYRE
In 1842, Charlotte Brontë fell in (unrequited) love with Constantin Héger, her dark-haired, blue-eyed, cigar-smoking married Belgian professor. In "Villette", Lucy Snowe has an evening encounter with her teacher Paul Emanuel—a dark-haired, blue-eyed, cigar smoker
/ Charlotte Bronte /
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"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs."
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"Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted in school at Roe Head in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, returning in 1835 as a governess. In 1839, she undertook the role of governess for the Sidgwick family, but left after a few months to return to Haworth, where the sisters opened a school, but failed to attract pupils. Instead, they turned to writing and they each first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers, her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London literary circles. Charlotte Brontë was the last to die of all her siblings."
W
Born: April 21, 1816, Thornton, Yorkshire, England
Died: March 31, 1855, Haworth, Yorkshire, England
Resting place: St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth, England
Pen name: Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley, Currer Bell
Occupation: Novelist, poet, governess
Nationality: British
Genre: Fiction, poetry
Notable works: Jane Eyre, Villette
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Charlotte Bronte (2013). “Jane Eyre”, p.76, Simon and Schuster
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Charlotte Brontë’s classroom fantasy
A passage from “Villette” reveals Brontë’s sexual imagination
ECON.ST
Vintage Books & Anchor Books
"If the twenty-year-old Charlotte Brontë had been told that she would one day be a household name, that her picture would hang in a future National Portrait Gallery, and that pilgrims would travel to Haworth on her account from as far away as Japan, she would have been delighted but not altogether surprised. The image of the Brontës presented in Charlotte’s own “Biographical Notice” of her sisters casts them as “unobtrusive women” shunning fame. Yet Charlotte’s early ambition was not merely to write but 'to be for ever known.'"
--Lucasta Miller, The Bronte Myth
In a brilliant combination of biography, literary criticism, and history, The Bronté Myth shows how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronté became cultural icons whose ever-changing reputations reflected the obsessions of various eras.
When literary London learned that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had been written by young rural spinsters, the Brontés instantly became as famous as their shockingly passionate books. Soon after their deaths, their first biographer spun the sisters into a picturesque myth of family tragedies and Yorkshire moors. Ever since, these enigmatic figures have tempted generations of readers–Victorian, Freudian, feminist–to reinterpret them, casting them as everything from domestic saints to sex-starved hysterics. In her bewitching “metabiography,” Lucasta Miller follows the twists and turns of the phenomenon of Bront-mania and rescues these three fiercely original geniuses from the distortions of legend.
Read more here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/114751/the-bronte-myth/
英國的維多利亞時代，通常是指西元1837年至1901年，英國維多利亞女王在位的時期，這是英國從農業社會轉變為工業社會的轉型時期。就在這個 年代，勃朗特（Charlotte Brontë）出版了她的《簡愛》（Jane Eyre）（1847），狄更斯完成《雙城記》（A Tale of Two Cities）（1859），柯南．道爾創作出了福爾摩斯（Sherlock Holmes），彌爾寫下了《論自由》（On Liberty）。
'Becoming Jane Eyre'
By SHEILA KOHLER
Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER BENFEY
In this muted and gently probing novel, Charlotte Brontë finds liberation through her dauntless, self-reliant heroine and fictional alter ego, Jane Eyre.夏綠蒂出生牧師家庭，因為母親早逝，家境貧困兄弟姐妹又多，8歲的夏綠蒂和姊妹們一起被送入柯文橋女子寄宿學校(Cowan Bridge)。學校惡劣的環境，讓夏綠蒂的兩個姐姐染上肺病去世，造成夏綠蒂的童年陰影。之後夏綠蒂到米菲爾德(Mirfield)繼續就學，多年後以家庭教師的身分到貴族家庭工作，但因為無法忍受貴族人家的歧視與刻薄，2年後放棄家庭教師的工作，打算和妹妹艾蜜莉自辦學校。為了辦學，夏綠蒂和艾蜜莉到義大利進修法文和德文，雖然之後辦學未果，但這段進修的經驗激發夏綠蒂的創作欲望，催生女作家夏綠蒂‧勃朗特的誕生。
夏綠蒂在1954年6月結婚，懷孕後身體極速惡化，逝世於1855年3月31日。
夏綠蒂在1954年6月結婚，懷孕後身體極速惡化，逝世於1855年3月31日。
Charlotte Brontë died #onthisday in 1855. In Jane Eyre, she challenged the notion of the ideal woman in Victorian times with a fictional heroine who demands equality and respect. Adopt this book, a great gift for Brontë fans. http://bit.ly/1EvqTSR
In Jane Eyre, unlike life, "every character gets what he or she deserves". Melvyn Bragg explores this 'intensely emotional but intellectual' novel and its impact.
http://bbc.in/1FoW78I
http://bbc.in/1FoW78I
On this day in 1847, Charlotte Brontë sent her manuscript of JANE EYRE to her eventual publisher, Smith, Elder and Co., in London, under her pseudonym of Currer Bell. (The novel had already been rejected five times.) Many first reviewers thought the book outrageous; one speculated that Currer Bell was an "unsexed" woman who dared "to trample upon customs established by our forefathers, and long destined to shed glory upon our domestic circles."*
“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
―from JANE EYRE
―from JANE EYRE
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總是一聲嘆息的咆哮山莊 ( 此書譯本可能超過20種 包括梁實秋的)
那種強烈無比的愛
豈只是那一代的故事
美中不足的是語言無腔調....
HBO
2011/3/11
Emily Bronte''s Wuthering Heights
Ralph Fiennes | Juliette Binoche 主角
1992
Heathcliff is Cathy Earnshaw's foster brother; more than that, he is her other half. When forces within and without tear them apart, Heathcliff wreaks vengeance on those he holds responsible, even into a second generation. Written by Cleo
"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.
"That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there, had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."
*****她們家的生活介紹/書信等都已有漢譯
The Brontës /ˈbrɒntiz/[1][2] were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (born 21 April 1816, in Thornton near Bradford), Emily (born 30 July 1818 in Thornton), and Anne (born 17 January 1820 in Thornton), are well known as poets and novelists. They originally published their poems and novels under masculine pseudonyms, following the custom of the times practised by female writers. Their stories immediately attracted attention, although not always the best, for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
The three sisters and their brother, Branwell, were very close and they developed their childhood imaginations through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories. The confrontation with the deaths first of their mother then of their two older sisters marked them profoundly and influenced their writing.
Their fame was due as much to their own tragic destinies as to their precociousness. Since their early deaths, and then the death of their father in 1861, they were subject to a following that did not cease to grow. Their home, the parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, has become a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
Contents
- 1 Origin of the name
- 2 Members of the Brontë family
- 3 Education
- 4 Literary evolution
- 5 The Brontë sisters' literary career
- 6 Charlotte Brontë
- 7 Branwell Brontë
- 8 Emily Brontë
- 9 Anne Brontë
- 10 Northern England at the time of the Brontës
- 11 The Brontë sisters' place in literature
- 12 Brontë descendants
- 13 References
- 14 Further reading
- 15 External links
"I have been reading Villette, a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre."
- George Eliot (do you agree?)
- George Eliot (do you agree?)
Charlotte Brontë: Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre ...
www.telegraph.co.uk › Culture › Books
Apr 21, 2014 - Everybody knows Jane Eyre, but Charlotte Brontë's greatest and most original novel was her last, Villette.Emily Jane Bronte was born in Yorkshire, England on this day in 1818.
"Oh, I'm burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!"
--from WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë
--from WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë
Perhaps the most haunting and tormented love story ever written, Wuthering Heights is the tale of the troubled orphan Heathcliff and his doomed love for Catherine Earnshaw. Published in 1847, the year before Emily Bronte's death at the age of thirty, Wuthering Heights has proved to be one of the nineteenth century's most popular yet disturbing masterpieces. The windswept moors are the unforgettable setting of this tale of the love between the foundling Heathcliff and his wealthy benefactor's daughter, Catherine. Through Catherine's betrayal of Heathcliff and his bitter vengeance, their mythic passion haunts the next generation even after their deaths. Incorporating elements of many genres—from gothic novels and ghost stories to poetic allegory—and transcending them all, Wuthering Heights is a mystifying and powerful tour de force. READ an excerpt here:http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/18836/wuthering-heights/
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