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BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF THE SELECTED AUTHORS

Each of the four writers, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and Jeanette Winterson, are connected to feminism and approached the topic in a slightly different way. This chapter, however, discusses their lives and mentions their best- known works.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), a British novelist and poet, was the eldest of three Brontë sisters. When she was five years old her mother died of cancer and she and her siblings were raised by her aunt. Charlotte and her sisters were then sent to a Clergy Daughter’s School to gain an education, however, the school’s poor conditions permanently affected Charlotte’s physical and mental development, which she afterwards depicted in Jane Eyre. When Charlotte returned home from school, she acted as the oldest sibling as a mother towards her sisters and brother.
The family lived in a Haworth Parsonage which is also the place where the siblings started creating their fiction. The siblings created fictional worlds and began chronicle the lives and struggles of their characters. Charlotte with her brother Branwell wrote about imagined country Angria, whereas Emily and Anne wrote poems about the country of Gondal. Charlotte, nonetheless, continued her education and between 1835 and 1838 was a teacher and after that also worked as a governess. In 1846 Charlotte, Emily and Anne published a collection of their poems under pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. And a year later she published her masterpiece Jane Eyre (1847), which is inspired by the author’s life and the book became an immediate success.
Among her other novels are Shirley (1848), which concerns with the role of women in society, and Villette (1853), that deals with isolation and social repression of individual desire.
The deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne affected Charlotte on a great scale, nevertheless, she managed to get married despite her father’s disapproval. However, in 1854 while expecting a baby she caught pneumonia and after a lengthy illness she died the following year.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is considered to be one of the most renowned authors of British history. He was born in Dorchester, in a rural area of Wessex, and studied architecture and consequently became an architect, however, when he came to London in 1891 he found himself to be more interested in writing poetry and fiction. Hardy regarded himself as a poet, however, his poems were not received very well during his lifetime. After publishing Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), which was a success, he decided to pursue his literary career and give up architectural work, nonetheless, after publishing Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895) he received very harsh critiques which sent him back to poetry.
The area of Wessex had a huge influence on him, as most of his fictional works are set there. He created a semi-fictional region of Wessex based on one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain. His works are influenced by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens. Hardy was a Victorian realist and in his novels he tried to depict the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England, he also criticized beliefs relating to marriage and religion, which limit people’s lives and cause sadness.
Hardy was married twice, however, the death of his first wife affected him tremendously and in many of his poems he is dealing with her death. Hardy himself died in January 1928 and is buried in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer, philosopher, critic and foremost modernist of the 20^th century. At the age of six she was sexually abused by her brother and the memory of this incident became only more permanent after her mother suddenly died. As a result of that she suffered from nervous breakdowns and anxiety. In her twenties, after the death of her father, she moved to Bloomsbury and became a member of the Bloomsbury Groups. The group consisted of many influential figures; writers, intellectuals, and artists, who were united by a belief in the importance of the arts. In 1912 she got married to Leonard Woolf, a member of the Bloomsbury Group, however, she kept a romantic relationship with Vita Sackville-West. Woolf was known for her mood swings and deep depression, and she committed suicide in 1941, in her late fifties.
She pioneered a new style of writing – the stream of consciousness, which she applied in most of her novels. In her writings, she explores problems of personal identity and relationships, love, isolation and change. Woolf’s highly acclaimed novels are Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928).
Nonetheless, Woolf was not only a novelist but also a feminist and she is also known for her essays, especially for A Room of One’s Own, which is an extended essay defending women’s rights. The essay also includes the very famous quote “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
A contemporary English writer Jeanette Winterson, born in August 1959 in Manchester, is known for her quirky and unconventional novels. She was strictly brought up by her religious mother who intended her to be a missionary, however, at the age of 16 Winterson identified herself as a lesbian and moved to London. After gaining diploma from St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, she had various jobs while working on her novels. After publishing Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) the novel received high acclaim and won a Whitbread Award for the best novel. Among her other novels are The Passion (1987), that is inspired by her affair with her literary agent, and Sexting the Cherry (1989), which is considered to be very important for women as it deals with position of women in patriarchal society.
In 2006 Winterson was made an officer of Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. Her novels are very popular and many of them were also adapted for television.

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