Reading Books and Looking at Pictures in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë

In their novels, Charlotte Brontë and, to a lesser extent, her sister Anne, refer to books and paintings as a way of establishing important aspects of character and clarifying thematic concerns. In her extensive references to specific writers and artists, Charlotte repeatedly demonstrates her love of English, French and German Romanticism and her correspondingly cool response to the English Augustans and European classical writers. Her characters are frequently placed morally and temperamentally by reference to their taste in literature and art. This article traces these references and their significance from 'The Professor' to 'Villette' and concludes that, by the time she wrote her final novel, Charlotte Brontë had developed a subtle, and, indeed, innovatory technique of giving depth and subtlety to her fiction by the use of such references.