6. Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë was the eldest of the three Brontë literary children, along with her younger sisters Anne and Emily. Charlotte is most famous for her novel Jane Eyre, while Emily was famed for Wuthering Heights and her sister Anne wrote what is now widely considered to be one of the first feminist novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Charlotte had a sad and short life, having to witness the death of all five of her siblings in her short time on earth. The deaths of her two sisters, Emily and Anne, within a year of each from tuberculosis hit her particularly hard.
Charlotte did not marry until unusually late in life by Victorian standards. She wed a strict Irish pastor, Arthur Bell Nicholls, at the age of 38 in 1854. Her father strongly opposed the union, as Brontë was already famous in London due to her writing and Nicholls was merely a poor rural pastor. Brontë became pregnant shortly after her marriage and sadly died, along with her unborn child, of a wasting disease believed to either has been tuberculosis or dehydration and malnutrition from hyperemesis gravidarum caused by her pregnancy.
Brontë epitomized the beauty standards of the Victorian era. She was incredibly small and frail, with contemporary accounts putting her under five feet tall. She had very fair skin and the kind of large, bright eyes that women used toxic nightshade drops to achieve. Her personality was timid and retiring, which was also attractive to many men in the era. Her death at only 38 of either typhus or tuberculosis would likely have given her the wasting, pale appearance that was all the rage in London at the time.
