In August 1824, Patrick sent Charlotte, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth to the Clergy Daughters'

School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Charlotte maintained that the school's poor condi-
tions permanently affected her health and physical development, and hastened the deaths
of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who both died of tuberculosis in June 1825.
After the deaths of his older daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the
school.[2] Charlotte used the school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre, which is
similarly affected by tuberculosis that is exacerbated by the poor conditions.

In 1839, she took up the first of many positions as governess to families in Yorkshire, a ca-
reer she pursued until 1841. In particular, from May to July 1839 she was employed by the
Sidgwick family at their summer residence, Stone Gappe, in Lothersdale, where one of her
charges was John Benson Sidgwick (1835–1927), an unruly child who on one occasion threw
the Bible at Charlotte, an incident that may have been the inspiration for a part of the open -
ing chapter of Jane Eyre in which John Reed throws a book at the young Jane.[16] Brontë
did not enjoy her work as a governess, noting her employers treated her almost as a slave,
constantly humiliating her.

In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Con-
stantin Héger (1809–1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Héger (1804–1887). During her
time in Brussels, Brontë, who favoured the Protestant ideal of an individual in direct contact
with God, objected to the stern Catholicism of Madame Héger, which she considered a
tyrannical religion that enforced conformity and submission to the Pope. In return for board
and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the school was
cut short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look
after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842.
Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the
school. Her second stay was not happy: she was homesick and deeply attached to Con-
stantin Héger. She returned to Haworth in January 1844 and used the time spent in Brussels
as the inspiration for some of the events in The Professor and Villette.

In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enroll at the boarding school run by Con-
stantin Héger (1809–1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Héger (1804–1887). During her
time in Brussels, Brontë, who favoured the Protestant ideal of an individual in direct contact
with God, objected to the stern Catholicism of Madame Héger, which she considered a
tyrannical religion that enforced conformity and submission to the Pope. In return for board
and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the school was
cut short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look
after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842.
Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the
school. Her second stay was not happy: she was homesick and deeply attached to Con-
stantin Héger. She returned to Haworth in January 1844 and used the time spent in Brussels
as the inspiration for some of the events in The Professor and Villette.
After returning to Haworth, Charlotte and her sisters made headway with opening their own
boarding school in the family home. It was advertised as "The Misses Brontë's Establish-
ment for the Board and Education of a limited number of Young Ladies" and inquiries were
made to prospective pupils and sources of funding. But none were attracted and in October
1844, the project was abandoned.

In may 1846 Charlotte, Emily, and Anne self-financed the publication of a joint collection of
poems under their assumed names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The pseudonyms veiled the
sisters' sex while preserving their initials; thus Charlotte was Currer Bell. "Bell" was the
middle name of Haworth's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls whom Charlotte later married, and
"Currer" was the surname of Frances Mary Richardson Currer who had funded their school
(and maybe their father). Of the decision to use noms de plume, Charlotte wrote:

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Ac-
ton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assum-
ing Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women,
because – without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not
what is called "feminine" – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be
looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement
the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

Although only two copies of the collection of poems were sold, the sisters continued writing
for publication and began their first novels, continuing to use their noms de plume when
sending manuscripts to potential publishers.

Brontë's first manuscript, 'The Professor', did not secure a publisher, although she was
heartened by an encouraging response from Smith, Elder & Co. of Cornhill, who expressed
an interest in any longer works Currer Bell might wish to send. Brontë responded by finishing
and sending a second manuscript in August 1847. Six weeks later, Jane Eyre was published.

In view of the success of her novels, particularly Jane Eyre, Brontë was persuaded by her
publisher to make occasional visits to London, where she revealed her true identity and be-
gan to move in more exalted social circles, becoming friends with Harriet Martineau and
Elizabeth Gaskell, and acquainted with William Makepeace Thackeray and G.H. Lewes. She
never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time, as she did not want to leave her
ageing father. Thackeray's daughter, writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, recalled a visit
to her father by Brontë:

…two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair
and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a
pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are
beating with wild excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books
have set all London talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the
books – the wonderful books. …The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief
to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for,
 genius though she may be, Miss Brontë can barely reach his elbow. My own personal im-
pressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who
wish to chatter. …Everyone waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all.
Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our
kind governess… the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat round still ex-
pectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope
with it at all… after Miss Brontë had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front
door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut
the door quietly behind him… long afterwards… Mrs Procter asked me if I knew what had
happened. …It was one of the dullest evenings [Mrs Procter] had ever spent in her life… the
ladies who had all come expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the
constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the
room, left the house, and gone off to his club.

Brontë's friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell, while not particularly close, was significant in
that Gaskell wrote the first biography of Brontë after her death in 1855.

Before the publication of Villette, Brontë received an expected proposal of marriage from
Irishman Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, who had long been in love with her.[39]
She initially refused him and her father objected to the union at least partly because of
Nicholls's poor financial status. Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed that marriage provided
"clear and defined duties" that were beneficial for a woman,[40] encouraged Brontë to con-
sider the positive aspects of such a union and tried to use her contacts to engineer an im-
provement in Nicholls's finances. According to James Pope-Hennessy in The Flight of Youth,
it was the generosity of Richard Monckton Milnes that made the marriage possible. Brontë
meanwhile was increasingly attracted to Nicholls and by January 1854 she had accepted his
proposal. They gained the approval of her father by April and married in June. Her father
Patrick had intended to give Charlotte away, but at the last minute decided he could not,
and Charlotte had to make her way to the church without him. The married couple took their
honeymoon in Banagher, County Offaly, Ireland. By all accounts, her marriage was a suc-
cess and Brontë found herself very happy in a way that was new to her.

Brontë became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly and, ac-
cording to Gaskell, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring
faintness". She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, three weeks before her 39th
birthday. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis, i.e. consumption (not
tuberculosis, which was only one of many diseases included in this now outdated classifica -
tion), but biographers including Claire Harman and others suggest that she died from dehy-
dration and malnourishment due to vomiting caused by severe morning sickness or hyper-
emesis gravidarum. Brontë was buried in the family vault in the Church of St Michael and All
Angels at Haworth.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857. It was an
important step for a leading female novelist to write a biography of another, and Gaskell's
approach was unusual in that, rather than analysing her subject's achievements, she con-
centrated on private details of Brontë's life, emphasising those aspects that countered the
accusations of "coarseness" that had been levelled at her writing. The biography is frank in
places, but omits details of Brontë's love for Héger, a married man, as being too much of an
affront to contemporary morals and a likely source of distress to Brontë's father, widower,
and friends. Mrs Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick
Brontë, claiming that he did not allow his children to eat meat. This is refuted by one of
Emily Brontë's diary papers, in which she describes preparing meat and potatoes for dinner
at the parsonage. It has been argued that Gaskell's approach transferred the focus of atten-
tion away from the 'difficult' novels, not just Brontë's, but all the sisters', and began a
process of sanctification of their private lives

Héger letters
https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/04/21/charlotte-bronte-love-letters-heger/

On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin
Héger after leaving Brussels in 1844. Written in French except for one postscript in English,
the letters broke the prevailing image of Brontë as an angelic martyr to Christian and female
duties that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell. The letters,
which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Héger fre-
quently appears not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, al -
though they are complex and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an ex-
ample of literary self-dramatisation and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil.

In 1980 a commemorative plaque was unveiled at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (BOZAR), on the site
of the Madam Heger's school, in honour of Charlotte and Emily.[55] In May 2017 the plaque was cleaned.