The Professor

Synopsis

The professor is charlotte bronte's first novel, in which she audaciously inhabits the voice and conciousness of a man, william crimsworth. Like jane eyre he is parentless; like lucy snowe in villette he leaves the certainties of england to forge a life in brussels. But as a man, william has freedom of action, and as a writer bronte is correspondingly liberated, exploring the relationship between power and sexual desire. William's first person narration reveals his attraction to the dominating directress of the girls school where he teaches, played out in the school's ' secret garden'.