"Falling in love with M. Heger laid the ground for the emotional intensity and recklessness in Charlotte Brontë's novels. She experienced to the fullest a deep, scalding frustration. The uselessness of her love, the dreadful inappropriateness and unavailability of the object, turned out to be one of those sources of pain that are also the springs of knowledge. Her misery caused her to examine her whole life, to face what lay ahead; and if she found little to be optimistic about, at least she knew how to think deeply, and in a new way, on the condition of loneliness and deprivation. This was important because the condition was then and is always shared by so many."—Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature

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