page_title: Brontë family
section_title: Role of the women
hierarchical_section_title: Brontë family / Northern England at the time of the Brontës / Role of the women
caption_attribution_description: English: "How dare I, Mrs Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth."
context_page_description: The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, are well known as poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they originally published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories immediately attracted attention 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 during childhood developed their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play set in an intricate imaginary world, and then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set therein. The deaths of first their mother, and then of their two older sisters marked them profoundly and influenced their writing, as did the relative isolation in which they were raised.
context_section_description: According to Robert Southey, poet laureate, in his response to Charlotte, ladies from a good background should be content with an education and a marriage embellished with some decorative talents. Mr Brontë also said to one of the characters in his The Maid of Kilarney, without one knowing whether it truly reflected a widespread opinion in order to support it or to condemn it: "The education of female ought, most assuredly, to be competent, in order that she might enjoy herself, and be a fit companion for man. But, believe me, lovely, delicate and sprightly woman, is not formed by nature, to pore over the musty pages of Grecian and Roman literature, or to plod through the windings of Mathematical Problems, nor has Providence assigned for her sphere of action, either the cabinet or the field. Her forte is softness, tenderness and grace." In any case, it seemed to contradict his attitude towards his daughters whom he encouraged even if he was not completely aware of what they did with their time.
caption: Jane Eyre, pleading her case to her aunt, Mrs Reed, before she sends her to hard service at Lowood (second edition of Jane Eyre, 1847)
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