You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.24 AVERAGE
3.24 AVERAGE
This audiobook through Audible was excellent. The narrator did a great job with each character voice and really put a lot of feeling into his performance. I enjoyed it.
This was not my favorite Bronte novel but I did enjoy reading it. It was a fun ride watching Crimsworth make his way through life. The novel really gives you a sense of having followed him almost his entire life. I could have done without some of the extended passages of description of the pupils at the school, or one of two other instances, but of course I expect it from a Bronte novel.
Loved the ending. A beautiful snapshot of the culmination of Crimsworth’s life and what it will likely be in the future.
This was not my favorite Bronte novel but I did enjoy reading it. It was a fun ride watching Crimsworth make his way through life. The novel really gives you a sense of having followed him almost his entire life. I could have done without some of the extended passages of description of the pupils at the school, or one of two other instances, but of course I expect it from a Bronte novel.
Loved the ending. A beautiful snapshot of the culmination of Crimsworth’s life and what it will likely be in the future.
slow-paced
Rasauttavan rasistinen, moralisoiva ja pitkäpiimäinen teos, joka ei yllä millään muotoa Brontën Kotiopettajattaren romaanin tasolle.
En tiedä mikä teoksessa ärsytti kaikkein eniten. Vaihtoehtoja on ainakin kaksi. Ensiksikin Brontë on ajalleen ja sen erilaisille rotu- ja lajiteorioille uskollinen, ja noin 1/5 teoksesta keskittyy kuvaamaan kuinka kertakaikkisen typeriä ja henkisiltä lahjoiltaan vajavaisia Belgian "alkuperäiskansa" flaamit ovat. Samalla päähenkilö ihan todella uskoo, että ihmisen henkiset kyvyt näkyvät naamasta. En ymmärrä, miksi päähenkilö ylipäätään lähti Belgiaan, jos kerran tiesi joutuvansa katolilaisten alkuperäiskansojen saartamaksi. Flaamien kuvitellun typeryyden sijaan olisin mielelläni lukenut vaikka kuvauksia Brysselin rakennuksista ja kaduista. Toinen ärsyttävä seikka oli, että päähenkilön toimiessa englannin kielen opettajana tyttökoulussa, hän kiinnitti huomiota vain muiden virheisiin englannin kielessä, mutta uskoi koko ajan ilmeisesti puhuvansa erittäin hyvää, jopa virheetöntä ranskaa. No en kyllä usko.
Mielenkiintoisen tästä teki lähinnä päähenkilön kasvutarina, joka rakentui uskottavasti ja jossain määrin jopa samaistuttavasti. Esikoisteokseksi tämä oli ihan onnistunut, mutta nykylukijana olisin kaivannut ehkä vähän enemmän draamaa, vauhtia ja vaarallisia tilanteita.
En tiedä mikä teoksessa ärsytti kaikkein eniten. Vaihtoehtoja on ainakin kaksi. Ensiksikin Brontë on ajalleen ja sen erilaisille rotu- ja lajiteorioille uskollinen, ja noin 1/5 teoksesta keskittyy kuvaamaan kuinka kertakaikkisen typeriä ja henkisiltä lahjoiltaan vajavaisia Belgian "alkuperäiskansa" flaamit ovat. Samalla päähenkilö ihan todella uskoo, että ihmisen henkiset kyvyt näkyvät naamasta. En ymmärrä, miksi päähenkilö ylipäätään lähti Belgiaan, jos kerran tiesi joutuvansa katolilaisten alkuperäiskansojen saartamaksi. Flaamien kuvitellun typeryyden sijaan olisin mielelläni lukenut vaikka kuvauksia Brysselin rakennuksista ja kaduista. Toinen ärsyttävä seikka oli, että päähenkilön toimiessa englannin kielen opettajana tyttökoulussa, hän kiinnitti huomiota vain muiden virheisiin englannin kielessä, mutta uskoi koko ajan ilmeisesti puhuvansa erittäin hyvää, jopa virheetöntä ranskaa. No en kyllä usko.
Mielenkiintoisen tästä teki lähinnä päähenkilön kasvutarina, joka rakentui uskottavasti ja jossain määrin jopa samaistuttavasti. Esikoisteokseksi tämä oli ihan onnistunut, mutta nykylukijana olisin kaivannut ehkä vähän enemmän draamaa, vauhtia ja vaarallisia tilanteita.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
#OUABC 2024 Reading Challenge: 40 Prompts (33. A lesser known book by a popular author)
3.5 Stars • "The Professor" by Charlotte Brontë follows William Crimsworth, a young English teacher in Belgium. After a falling out with his wealthy brother, William seeks independence. He starts teaching at a boys' school and becomes romantically involved with Frances Evans Henri, a teacher at a nearby girls' school. Initially, he is misled by the school's headmistress, Madame Reuter, but eventually recognizes her deceit. William and Frances develop a relationship based on mutual respect and intellectual compatibility, leading to their marriage and the establishment of their own school.
#TheProfessor #CharlotteBrontë #Bookstagram
3.5 Stars • "The Professor" by Charlotte Brontë follows William Crimsworth, a young English teacher in Belgium. After a falling out with his wealthy brother, William seeks independence. He starts teaching at a boys' school and becomes romantically involved with Frances Evans Henri, a teacher at a nearby girls' school. Initially, he is misled by the school's headmistress, Madame Reuter, but eventually recognizes her deceit. William and Frances develop a relationship based on mutual respect and intellectual compatibility, leading to their marriage and the establishment of their own school.
#TheProfessor #CharlotteBrontë #Bookstagram
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This strikes me as an incredibly cynical depiction of what ultimately becomes a happy life. Frances was incontrovertibly the best part of this book. In her, you can see the seeds of Jane Eyre shining through.
The Professor seems to bear the marks of Charlotte’s hyper-consciousness about her own position as a woman writer; it participates in, while, at the same time, critiquing Victorian gender norms and, in particular, the aesthetic objectification of women. (Until Frances comes to make her mark on the novel (and our narrator) this manifests itself in what becomes a pretty uncomfortable and unsettled reading experience for the first two-thirds-or-so of the novel).
This was one of those books that I think I will come to like more over time. (And a book that I’m afraid doesn’t necessarily age into modernity as well as some of her others..)
The Professor seems to bear the marks of Charlotte’s hyper-consciousness about her own position as a woman writer; it participates in, while, at the same time, critiquing Victorian gender norms and, in particular, the aesthetic objectification of women. (Until Frances comes to make her mark on the novel (and our narrator) this manifests itself in what becomes a pretty uncomfortable and unsettled reading experience for the first two-thirds-or-so of the novel).
This was one of those books that I think I will come to like more over time. (And a book that I’m afraid doesn’t necessarily age into modernity as well as some of her others..)
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
O livro não é mau, tem um ou outro personagem que são bons mas não parece haver um grande aprofundar ou desenvolvimento de nenhuma delas. Há personagens que são abandonadas meio aleatoriamente mas pronto
O que gostei mais foi a Frances conseguir apostar numa carreira para ela própria e o marido apoiar, o que tendo em conta que é uma história do século XIX, é ótimo ver.
Há também uma personagem meio estranha que fazem parecer que é um homem com traços femininos que aparece do nada só critica o MMC sem razão nenhuma mas no final acabam amigos e ninguém sabe porque 🤣
O que gostei mais foi a Frances conseguir apostar numa carreira para ela própria e o marido apoiar, o que tendo em conta que é uma história do século XIX, é ótimo ver.
Há também uma personagem meio estranha que fazem parecer que é um homem com traços femininos que aparece do nada só critica o MMC sem razão nenhuma mas no final acabam amigos e ninguém sabe porque 🤣
Review from 2016
B+ for narration; B- for content.
Before I got into romance reading and listening in a big way, my usual literary diet consisted principally of historical fiction and classics, mostly from the 19th century. I don’t listen to so many of the latter these days, but when I realised that 21st April 2016 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, I thought I’d revisit one of her books in audio and had intended to pick up a copy of Villette. But then I came across a new(ish) version of The Professor, which happens to be the one book of hers I haven’t read, and decided to give that a spin instead. Although it was the author’s first novel, she was unable to find a publisher for it in her lifetime and it wasn’t published until 1857, two years after her death. It’s the only one of her books to take a male character as its central protagonist and narrator, and as such presents an interesting viewpoint; a female writer attempting to write how a man might think and act, which I believe to be quite unusual for the time. The novel has often been dismissed as a “dry run” for the much more successful Villette, and the two books do indeed take their inspiration from Brontë’s experiences as a schoolteacher in Brussels.
William Crimsworth is an orphan whose relatives begrudgingly provided him with a good education. After leaving Eton, he refuses the church living offered by his sanctimonious uncles and also declines to marry his wealthy cousin. Disowned as a result, William decides instead to try to make his way in trade and to that end contacts his much older brother, a successful businessman in the north of England. Edward Crimsworth is cold and calculating; he takes his younger brother on as a lowly clerk and takes every opportunity he can to remind William of his superiority and to humiliate him. When his situation becomes intolerable, William takes the advice of an acquaintance, the bluff, no-nonsense Mr Hunsden, and moves to Brussels to take up a position as an English teacher at a boys’ school there.
In his early twenties, William is not much older than some of his pupils, but he quickly learns to assert his authority and gains in confidence, becoming a more than proficient teacher. Very soon, Mademoiselle Zoraida Reuter, the directrice of the adjoining girls’ school asks him to undertake some additional teaching duties there. He agrees to her proposal and it isn’t long before he finds himself falling under the spell of the lovely but coquettish Zoraida. It’s only when he chances to overhear a conversation between her and Monsieur Pelet, the head of the boys’ school, in which they discuss their impending marriage, that Mlle Reuter’s true nature is revealed to William, and he realises that she has been using his attraction to her in order to manipulate him. Disgusted with both her and himself, William adopts a manner of cold civility toward her, resisting her attempts to draw him back in – but he can now see through her attempts to seem benevolent and concerned. It’s at this point in time that she introduces a new pupil into William’s class, the young teacher of needlework and lace-making, Frances Henri. William is most pleasantly surprised with the progress Frances makes and is impressed with the quality of her imagination and ability to express herself, and gradually, the couple fall in love. When Frances is dismissed by a jealous Mlle Reuter, a furious William resigns his post and goes in search of her, determined to make her his wife.
I enjoyed listening to the story and am glad to have finally experienced the book, but I didn’t find it as compelling as the author’s other works. Charlotte Brontë makes good use of her personal experience of teaching in Brussels, as is obvious in the way she depicts the relationships between teacher and pupil so well. In fact, there are parts of the story that deal with William’s classroom experiences that are amazingly resonant for someone in the teaching profession today!
While William is generally a fairly sympathetic character and there is no doubting that his determination to achieve success through his own hard work is an admirable trait, he is sometimes difficult to like, and can come across as bigoted and self-righteous. The problem occurs when the author uses him to express some of her own prejudices. The distrust of Catholicism William shows was widespread in Victorian England at the time the book was written – it is surely no coincidence that the scheming, manipulative Zoraida is Catholic – and the assumptions he makes about his female pupils based on their appearance and the way he compares them unfavourably to good, Protestant English girls are distinctly unpleasant to the modern ear.
On the other hand, she brilliantly captures William’s feelings of loneliness and isolation when he arrives in an unfamiliar country with no money and no friends, and her descriptions of the sights and sounds of Brussels are evocative and clearly drawn from personal experience.
Listeners should be advised that there is more than a smattering of French words and phrases dotted throughout the text. There are several conversations in that language which are not translated (although some print editions provide translations), so if you are considering listening to this and don’t speak French, you might want to obtain a printed edition or some translations in advance.
As is often the case with audiobooks of Classic Literature, there is more than one version available, so choosing which one to listen to usually comes down to the narrator. There are four versions of The Professor – of which this is the most recent – available at Audible, and I did indeed choose it because James Langton is a favourite narrator of mine and I’d listen to him in practically anything. His pacing is very good and his slightly husky, mellow tone is attractive and very easy to listen to, which is certainly a bonus in the extended passages of narrative and description. He differentiates well between the various characters, and his French accent is very good, whether he is speaking French or English with a French accent. I did notice a few small mispronunciations in the French dialogue here and there, but not many. I especially liked his portrayal of Hunsden, the brash Yorkshireman who is William’s only close friend; and his characterisation of Frances, softly-spoken but with an underlying strength works very well.
Mr Langton’s skilful narration enhances the overall listening experience, although I recognise that The Professor is perhaps not a book that will appeal to all. But it is certainly worth listening to if you enjoy literary classics or the work of Charlotte Brontë in particular.
B+ for narration; B- for content.
Before I got into romance reading and listening in a big way, my usual literary diet consisted principally of historical fiction and classics, mostly from the 19th century. I don’t listen to so many of the latter these days, but when I realised that 21st April 2016 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, I thought I’d revisit one of her books in audio and had intended to pick up a copy of Villette. But then I came across a new(ish) version of The Professor, which happens to be the one book of hers I haven’t read, and decided to give that a spin instead. Although it was the author’s first novel, she was unable to find a publisher for it in her lifetime and it wasn’t published until 1857, two years after her death. It’s the only one of her books to take a male character as its central protagonist and narrator, and as such presents an interesting viewpoint; a female writer attempting to write how a man might think and act, which I believe to be quite unusual for the time. The novel has often been dismissed as a “dry run” for the much more successful Villette, and the two books do indeed take their inspiration from Brontë’s experiences as a schoolteacher in Brussels.
William Crimsworth is an orphan whose relatives begrudgingly provided him with a good education. After leaving Eton, he refuses the church living offered by his sanctimonious uncles and also declines to marry his wealthy cousin. Disowned as a result, William decides instead to try to make his way in trade and to that end contacts his much older brother, a successful businessman in the north of England. Edward Crimsworth is cold and calculating; he takes his younger brother on as a lowly clerk and takes every opportunity he can to remind William of his superiority and to humiliate him. When his situation becomes intolerable, William takes the advice of an acquaintance, the bluff, no-nonsense Mr Hunsden, and moves to Brussels to take up a position as an English teacher at a boys’ school there.
In his early twenties, William is not much older than some of his pupils, but he quickly learns to assert his authority and gains in confidence, becoming a more than proficient teacher. Very soon, Mademoiselle Zoraida Reuter, the directrice of the adjoining girls’ school asks him to undertake some additional teaching duties there. He agrees to her proposal and it isn’t long before he finds himself falling under the spell of the lovely but coquettish Zoraida. It’s only when he chances to overhear a conversation between her and Monsieur Pelet, the head of the boys’ school, in which they discuss their impending marriage, that Mlle Reuter’s true nature is revealed to William, and he realises that she has been using his attraction to her in order to manipulate him. Disgusted with both her and himself, William adopts a manner of cold civility toward her, resisting her attempts to draw him back in – but he can now see through her attempts to seem benevolent and concerned. It’s at this point in time that she introduces a new pupil into William’s class, the young teacher of needlework and lace-making, Frances Henri. William is most pleasantly surprised with the progress Frances makes and is impressed with the quality of her imagination and ability to express herself, and gradually, the couple fall in love. When Frances is dismissed by a jealous Mlle Reuter, a furious William resigns his post and goes in search of her, determined to make her his wife.
I enjoyed listening to the story and am glad to have finally experienced the book, but I didn’t find it as compelling as the author’s other works. Charlotte Brontë makes good use of her personal experience of teaching in Brussels, as is obvious in the way she depicts the relationships between teacher and pupil so well. In fact, there are parts of the story that deal with William’s classroom experiences that are amazingly resonant for someone in the teaching profession today!
While William is generally a fairly sympathetic character and there is no doubting that his determination to achieve success through his own hard work is an admirable trait, he is sometimes difficult to like, and can come across as bigoted and self-righteous. The problem occurs when the author uses him to express some of her own prejudices. The distrust of Catholicism William shows was widespread in Victorian England at the time the book was written – it is surely no coincidence that the scheming, manipulative Zoraida is Catholic – and the assumptions he makes about his female pupils based on their appearance and the way he compares them unfavourably to good, Protestant English girls are distinctly unpleasant to the modern ear.
On the other hand, she brilliantly captures William’s feelings of loneliness and isolation when he arrives in an unfamiliar country with no money and no friends, and her descriptions of the sights and sounds of Brussels are evocative and clearly drawn from personal experience.
Listeners should be advised that there is more than a smattering of French words and phrases dotted throughout the text. There are several conversations in that language which are not translated (although some print editions provide translations), so if you are considering listening to this and don’t speak French, you might want to obtain a printed edition or some translations in advance.
As is often the case with audiobooks of Classic Literature, there is more than one version available, so choosing which one to listen to usually comes down to the narrator. There are four versions of The Professor – of which this is the most recent – available at Audible, and I did indeed choose it because James Langton is a favourite narrator of mine and I’d listen to him in practically anything. His pacing is very good and his slightly husky, mellow tone is attractive and very easy to listen to, which is certainly a bonus in the extended passages of narrative and description. He differentiates well between the various characters, and his French accent is very good, whether he is speaking French or English with a French accent. I did notice a few small mispronunciations in the French dialogue here and there, but not many. I especially liked his portrayal of Hunsden, the brash Yorkshireman who is William’s only close friend; and his characterisation of Frances, softly-spoken but with an underlying strength works very well.
Mr Langton’s skilful narration enhances the overall listening experience, although I recognise that The Professor is perhaps not a book that will appeal to all. But it is certainly worth listening to if you enjoy literary classics or the work of Charlotte Brontë in particular.