SOURCE: “The Professor.” In The Cover of the Mask: The Autobiographers in Charlotte Brontë's Fiction, University of Victoria, 1982, pp. 20-41.

In the following excerpt, Tromly reviews the contemporary reception of Brontë's The Professor and surveys the plot, characterization, and imagery in the novel.

From its earliest reviews onward, critics have accorded The Professor the same reception which greeted the return of Milton's Satan to Hell: “a dismal universal hiss.” Only one voice has disturbed this reassuring critical certitude; and the dissenting voice has belonged to the person who is apparently least qualified to speak. Charlotte Brontë herself seems not to have faltered in her commitment to her first novel. She tried nine times to get The Professor published (it originally was rejected by six publishers), renewing her effort each time one of her other novels was more sympathetically received.¹ Brontë even attempted to use Jane Eyre...