Essays like this one were the key elements in Charlotte’s relationship with Monsieur Heger, as her later novels make abundantly clear. Three out of Charlotte’s four novels contain an essay written by a pupil for her teacher, Jane Eyre being the only exception. In each case the essay serves as the midwife of love, the means by which the hero is brought to a recognition of the intellectual powers and emotional depth hidden beneath the otherwise unexceptional exterior of an apparently conventional young woman.
