Not having been around very many females in his life, he is initally a little overcome, but he masters himself and finds pride in being a stern, no-nonsense teacher. The school next door is for girls, and eventually Crimsworth is hired to teach some classes for them as well. When this situation becomes untenable, Crimsworth ends up in Belgium and finds a position as an English professor at a boys' school.

He starts out in trade, working for his brother, who makes it very clear that he has no family feeling and no compassion at all. In this story, William Crimsworth has to make his way in the world due to a lack of harmony between him and various family members who might otherwise have helped him.

It's a valuable work, as it shows her developing skill, and it certainly has some intriguing storytelling, but it also has noticeable flaws. She meant this to be her first novel, but it was rejected by publishers and only printed posthumously. It's a good thing Charlotte Bronte got to publish Jane Eyre first. I do have a minor complaint that my edition did not include any translations of the French and I struggled to figure that out but I think I managed to work out at least some of the meaning. But overall, I really did enjoy reading this lesser known work and look forward to the last one I haven't read. Certainly, Crimsworth could dislike his French and Flemish students without making them national examples. They might be ideas that existed then but I didn't like them anyway and they seemed to be without purpose in the narrative. My main issues is just the national and religious stereotypes that are both jarring to a modern ear and generally I found offensive. He has some of Jane's strength of character and I grew to appreciate and root for him. There is a note of Jane Eyre with the narrator, Crimsworth, having a difficult early time with people who just hate him for existing at all. I really enjoyed it but I lost some of the better plot connections by putting it aside so much. I remember my first read of Jane Eyre when I devoured about 15 chapters in one sitting and this had a similar grab on me but then ended up getting shoved aside for books higher on my list and now I wish I had read it in just a day or two.

The Professor by Charlotte Brontë