The Advertisement of Jane Eyre

Abstract We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors,” Charlotte Brontë wrote about herself and her two younger sisters in a preface for Wuthering Heights. “This dream never relinquished,” she added, “it took the character of resolve.” The dream was especially dear to Charlotte Brontë, whose persistent and aggressive marketing of her own and her sisters’ manuscripts to publishers—sometimes in direct opposition to Emily’s wishes—was largely responsible for making the dream come true. Even after her considerable efforts as literary “agent” managed to secure an agreement with a publisher, Brontë insisted that more than the normal amount of money be spent on advertising, agreeing to deduction of that amount from the authors’ expected royalties. But this dream of authorship was not the only one that drove her. Through much of her life her sleep was disturbed by a recurrent dream of her two elder sisters. Maria and Elizabeth, both of whom had died at Cowan Bridge School, the model for what would become the Lowood School of Jane Eyre. This dream and Charlotte Brontë’s response to it are not unrelated to her consciously cultivated “dream” of becoming an author, and they may even provide a basis for understanding that dream and the dreams she later introduced into the book that made her the successful writer she so deeply desired to be.