The Professor by Charlotte Brontë
Published 1857 · 80,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Romance
How hard is The Professor to read?
The Professor scores 30 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 50 out of 100
- Victorian English with French phrases and educational terminology. More restrained vocabulary than Brontë's later works.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- First-person narration with measured, sometimes stiff prose. Less rhetorically elaborate than Jane Eyre.
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Themes of independence and work are explored through concrete situations rather than the passionate rhetoric of later novels.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- Small cast, single setting, straightforward plot. A compact novel without the complexity of Villette.
- Narrative indirection: 30 out of 100
- First-person male narrator with direct storytelling. Less psychological complexity than Jane Eyre's self-examination.
- Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
- Limited symbolic structure. The Brussels schools and the contrast between English and Continental values carry some symbolic weight.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Crimsworth's self-regard is sometimes unconsciously ironic, but the novel lacks the passionate irony of Brontë's mature work.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Complete resolution: Crimsworth and Frances marry, prosper, and return to England. An epilogue describes their son.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Linear first-person narrative with a single setting and a straightforward romantic plot. Brontë's simplest structure.
How The Professor is regarded
The Professor holds a literary regard score of 48 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.