Charlotte herself defended the novel passionately. "I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had seen real living men work theirs -- that he should never get a shilling he had not earned."
Indeed, William Crimsworth, the hero, is the self-made master of all his life's ambiguous fortune, including his career as a professor in Brussels, and his true love. Whatever the comparisons to Charlotte Brontë's other, more popular novels, The Professor deserves a closer examination and a new reader perspective.