Like her literary heroine, Charlotte Bronte suffered through a tough childhood, including time at boarding school with less than healthy conditions. Many of the characters and events of her famous novel Jane Eyre, in fact, parallel those of Bronte’s life in some form or another. Like her heroine, Bronte grew up a headstrong, capable woman among a strongly patriarchal society, a theme which she dealt with in her work, even if publishing it under the pseudonym of a male author.

On this day, October 15, in 1816, Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre, a book about the travails of an orphan, from a childhood with an abusive step-family to adulthood with a hard-drinking but beloved aristocrat and then a missionary.

Bronte adamantly refused to portray her protagonist as a “damsel in distress.” Jane Eyre’s relationship with the men in her life was that of equals, and much criticism is imparted between the lines of Bronte’s novel of Victorian society. Understanding that this message would be a lot more readily received if seemingly coming from a man, she adopted for the novel her pen name “Currer Bell.”