Charlotte Brontë

I wish you would not think me a woman. I wish all reviewers believed ‘Currer Bell’ [Ch.Brontë’s pseudonym] to be a man; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what you consider graceful, you will condemn me. [...] Come what will, I cannot, when I write, think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in feminity [sic], it is not on those terms, or with such ideas, I ever took pen in hand.

Letter of Charlotte Brontë to the critic George Henry Lewes, Nov 1, 1849.

[...] To such critics I would say ‘To you I am neither man nor woman – I come before you as an author only.’

Letter to W.S. Williams, Aug 16, 1849.

Ina Schabert, 1 February 2011

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