Analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 13, 2025

Although written in 1846, Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, The Professor, would not be published until after her 1855 death. Clearly autobiographical, it served as a model for her later, more fully developed version of her experiences in Brussels as a young woman in Villette (1853). While focusing on the romantic experiences of its protagonist and first-person point-of-view narrator, William Crimsworth, a character some critics feel represented a disguised woman, it also stresses themes, including the poor working conditions of England’s industrial force and the few choices available to women who wished to work.

An orphan who attended Eton and did not get on well with other members of his family, Crimsworth abandons his unpromising position as a Yorkshire mill clerk for a career as a teacher, a profession in which he hopes to advance his natural talents. The reader understands his attitude toward women when he speaks of studying his sister-in-law’s face in search of finding a spark of intelligence in its pretty, blank countenance, a search that fails. The fact that her husband, Crimsworth’s brother Edward, enjoys success as a businessman suggests that an ideology of materialism may not be conducive to an intellectual and superior life.

Crimsworth takes a position in Brussels and becomes enamored of Frances Henri, an intelligent Anglo-Swiss Protestant fellow teacher and lace-mender. She first impresses Crimsworth as having “at least two good points—mainly, perseverance and a sense of duty.” Their relationship is complicated by the presence of the egotistical and manipulative headmistress, the Catholic Zoraïde Reuter, to whom Crimsworth is clearly physically attracted, despite his protestation that he is not moved by a woman’s physical beauty. Crimsworth marries Frances and lives hopefully with their son, Victor, whose name suggests Crimsworth’s accomplishment of his modest plans for a future.

In the closing lines of the novel, he learns from his fellow former worker at the mill, Hunsden, of his brother’s burgeoning fortune and news of his “first flame, Zoraïde,” who apparently has gained a good deal of weight. Because the news is delivered by a man neither Crimsworth nor Frances views as completely desirable, the reader understands that the couple need feel no jealousy over their former rivals.

The quiet novel remains important as an example of the developing approach toward realism in fiction during the mid-19th century. While Brontë’s best-known novel, Jane Eyre (1847), was not well received due to what contemporary critics viewed as its immoral and unchristian themes, Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published a few months before the release of The Professor, had softened the public’s attitude toward the author. The intrigue it raised over Brontë’s life likely affected the gentle critical reception of the posthumously published novel. Considered by many as representing a flawed narrative approach, the novel later gained interest as the study of the Brontë sisters increased.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Edited by Charles Lemon. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1997.

Malone, Catherine. “‘We Have Learnt to Love Her More Than Her Books’: The Critical Reception of Brontë’s Professor.” The Review of English Studies 47 (May 1996): 175–188.