Charlotte Bronte`s first novel, The Professor, is narrated from the viewpoint of an ambitious and self-made man. Rejecting his aristocratic inheritance William Crimsworth goes to Brussels to find his fortune. He takes a job teaching at a boarding schoolfor young ladies, where he begins a flirtation with Zorai`de Reuter, who, out of jealousy, attempts to frustrate his courtship of Frances Henri, an attractive young woman determined to make her way in the world.
In The Professor Charlotte Bronte holds up to scrutiny the Victorian ideals of self-help and individualism. The result is an unusual love story, and a novel profoundly critical of a society in which the relationships between men and women are reduced to power struggles.