The two eldest of the three sisters, Charlotte (then 25) and Emily (23) came to Brussels in 1842 to study. The family was not well off and they had been employed as governesses but hated the work and wanted to start their own school. They needed to improve their French in order to teach it. They stayed at the Pensionnat Heger, a girl’s boarding school near Place Royale, where they taught English, as well as learning French and also German.
How much of an influence did their time in Brussels have on their work?
On Emily’s work, probably not much, although in Brussels she read some German romantic literature which may have influenced her novel Wuthering Heights. That she was motivated enough to come here at all is amazing, since she rarely left Yorkshire and was always homesick away from the family home on the moors.
But on Charlotte the influence of her time in Brussels was huge. Two of her four novels, The Professor and Villette, are based on her time here, and in Villette she portrays the man she fell in love with, her teacher Monsieur Heger. Villette is about the experience of being an expat in Brussels and when you read the novel after living here it seems much more vivid.
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