The Professor

Charlotte Brontë's novel follows the first-person narration of William Crimsworth, a young Englishman who must forge his own path after being left orphaned and without fortune.

The novel opens with a framing device: a letter William once wrote to an old Eton schoolmate named Charles, recounting his family history. His father, a wealthy manufacturer, went bankrupt and died. His mother, an aristocrat disowned by her brothers for marrying a tradesman, died shortly after William's birth. William's maternal uncles, Lord Tynedale and the Honourable John Seacombe, reluctantly funded his education at Eton. After graduating, they offer him a Church living, a paid clergy position, and marriage to one of his cousins. Stung by Lord Tynedale's contempt for trade, William refuses and declares he will follow his father's path. He writes to his elder brother Edward, a prosperous mill owner, requesting employment. Edward replies coolly, and William travels north to the industrial town of X—.

At Crimsworth Hall, Edward's grand residence, William finds no fraternal warmth. Edward installs him as a clerk handling foreign correspondence at 90 pounds a year. William works diligently, but Edward's antipathy deepens, fed by resentment of William's education and intelligence. At a birthday party, William retreats to contemplate his dead mother's portrait. There he meets Yorke Hunsden, a blunt, unconventional local manufacturer who remarks on the intelligence in the portrait's face. Hunsden later challenges William with provocative candor, insisting he is unfit for trade.

The crisis comes when Edward, enraged by public insults at a town hall meeting he traces back to Hunsden, confronts William and threatens him with a horse-whip. William wrestles it away, breaks it, and resigns on the spot. That evening, Hunsden admits to having provoked the confrontation and suggests William go to Brussels, writing him a letter of introduction to Mr. Brown, an English contact living there.

William crosses to Belgium, exhilarated by his freedom. In Brussels, Brown introduces him to M. Pelet, the gentle director of a boys' pensionnat, a type of residential school common on the Continent. Pelet engages William as professor of English and Latin at 1,000 francs per year with board and lodging. One window in William's room is boarded up because it faces the garden of the adjacent girls' pensionnat, run by Mlle Zoraïde Reuter.

Through Pelet's mother and her friend Mme Reuter, Mlle Reuter's mother, William is invited to teach English at the girls' school. He visits expecting an old woman but instead meets a young, shrewd directress of about 27 with nut-brown curls and a fresh complexion. William begins teaching her pupils and maintains stern composure despite finding many of them coquettish and morally lax.

Pelet tries to redirect William's interest toward the pupils and away from Mlle Reuter. The directress tests William, seeking a weakness through which to influence him. One day when William is ill, her solicitous warmth begins to affect him. She leads him into the garden on a May afternoon, and they sit under lilacs. William realizes he is falling in love. But that evening, from his window whose boards he had earlier removed, he overhears Mlle Reuter and Pelet walking in the moonlit garden. They are secretly engaged. William's nascent love is extinguished, and he treats her afterward with open coldness.

During this period, Frances Evans Henri enters William's class as a pupil-teacher who wishes to improve her English. She is slight, anxious, and clearly not Belgian. When she reads English aloud, her accent is pure and clear, astonishing William. He assigns a composition on King Alfred, and Frances submits a vivid, imaginative piece revealing genuine literary power. William speaks to Frances privately, acknowledging her talent. He learns she was born in Geneva to a Swiss pastor and an English mother, both now dead. She lives with her father's sister, Aunt Julienne, on a meager annuity, having taught herself lace-mending to earn money for lessons. She dreams of going to England to teach French. Under William's guidance, her writing improves dramatically, and she gains confidence.

Then Frances vanishes from the school. Mlle Reuter claims not to know her address. William announces his resignation and receives a farewell letter from Frances containing 20 francs but no return address. He searches Brussels for four weeks without success. On a Sunday walk, William enters the Protestant Cemetery outside the city and discovers Frances seated before the fresh grave of her Aunt Julienne. She recognizes him, her face flooding with joy. He accompanies her to her small but immaculately clean lodgings, where she makes tea with her mother's English china. Frances reveals that Mlle Reuter visited during her aunt's illness and effectively dismissed her, proving that Zoraïde lied about the address.

William's relationship with Pelet deteriorates. One night Pelet comes home drunk and reveals that Zoraïde has confessed her preference for William. After William makes clear he is pursuing Frances, Zoraïde recovers her practical instincts and reconciles with Pelet. Their wedding proceeds. William confirms his resignation, knowing he cannot remain under the same roof as the new Mme Pelet.

Without income or lodgings, William receives encouraging news: Frances has secured a position as a French teacher at an English school at 1,200 francs per year. Unable to propose without means, William recalls saving a pupil named Jean Baptiste Vandenhuten from a boating accident. The boy's grateful father, M. Vandenhuten, had urged William to call if in need. After weeks of searching and repeated rejections, William secures an appointment as English professor at a Brussels college at 3,000 francs per year through Vandenhuten's recommendation. Hunsden also arrives in Brussels, finding William penniless. He has purchased William's mother's portrait at auction after Edward's bankruptcy and sends it with a characteristically mocking note.

William visits Frances and overhears her reciting French verses of her own composition that thinly veil a pupil's love for her master. He enters, reads her poem, and proposes marriage. Frances consents but insists on keeping her teaching position, refusing financial dependence and arguing that couples who work together esteem each other more highly. William accepts her terms. Hunsden meets Frances and is impressed by her intelligence and spirit despite initial reservations about the match.

William and Frances marry in a Protestant chapel in January, with Vandenhuten giving the bride away. After a year and a half of shared working life, Frances proposes opening their own school. Over 10 years of partnership, their school becomes one of the most popular in Brussels. Frances is two women: by day, a stately, authoritative directress; by evening, a tender, playful wife. Their son Victor is born in the third year of marriage, named after Vandenhuten.

Having achieved financial independence, the Crimsworths sell their school and move to England, fulfilling Frances' lifelong dream. They settle at Daisy Lane, a picturesque cottage near Hunsden Wood, where Hunsden now lives in an ancestral Elizabethan mansion. Victor is a serious, intellectually voracious boy with a fierce temperament. When Hunsden's gift of a mastiff must be destroyed after a rabid bite, Victor is devastated, and Frances comforts him with gentle reasoning. They plan to send Victor to Eton, recognizing that his intense nature requires broader discipline. The novel closes on a summer evening with Frances calling William to tea on the lawn, Hunsden arriving with news, and Victor calling out to his father to join them.