First Names of Fictional Characters in Novels by Charlotte Bronte

Abstract

The first name is a distinctive personal label. It usually distinguishes oneself from other family members and from most other people. In common with other novelists, Charlotte Bronte chose for many fictional characters the first name of an actual person who was important to her. Attributes of the fictional character might provide useful information on feelings of the author toward the actual namesake. An unusual attribute of the four novels by Charlotte Bronte is that the author revealed an actual person who was the model for more than two dozen fictional characters. Experiences of the author are reproduced by some of the fictional characters and by other aspects of the four successive novels, <The Professor>, <Jane Eyre>, <Shirley>, and <Villette>. In each novel, one of the most important characters partially resembles Charlotte Bronte. A very minor character named Charlotte, in <Villette>, is the only fictional namesake of the author. Most of the actions and events in <The Professor> and in <Villette> are in Brussels, Belgium. In that foreign city, Charlotte Bronte was a student and then teacher at a school for young ladies. She fell in love with a teacher who was the husband of the school’s director.