Regret

(1816-1855) was a British novelist, the eldest out of the three famous Brontë sisters. She was born in Yorkshire, the third of six children, to Patrick Brontë (formerly “Patrick Brunty”), an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria Branwell. Maria Branwell Brontë died in 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of her spinster sister Elizabeth Branwell. In August 1824 Charlotte, along with her sisters Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, was sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School in Lancashire. The school was a horrific experience for the girls and conditions were appalling. Seven pupils died in a typhus epidemic and all four of the Brontë girls became very ill—Maria and Elizabeth dying of tuberculosis in 1825. Her experiences at the school deeply affected Brontë—her health never recovered and she immortalised the cruel and brutal treatment in her novel, Jane Eyre. In 1854 Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls becoming pregnant soon after her wedding. Her health declined rapidly and, according to Gaskell, she was attacked by “sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness”. She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, aged thirty-eight.