The Professor: Annotated Edition

When the orphaned William refuses his uncles ' proposal to become a clergyman and rejects an offer from his brother Edward to work as his clerk, he decides to accept a position as an English teacher at a boys ' school in Belgium. When his career leads him to take up another post at a girls' school nearby, William becomes emotionally involved with the manipulative headmistress of the establishment, Mademoiselle Reuter. The tangle of feelings produced by this relationship and his love for a younger pupil sets the young teacher on a downward spiral towards disaster.
Based on Charlotte Bronte 's own autobiographical experience in Brussels as a teacher, and later reworked into the much-expanded Villette and only published posthumously, The Professor was Charlotte Bronte 's first attempt at full-length fiction and bears all the hallmarks of her future work, with touches of genius and an unparalleled sharpness of style.