The Professor is Charlotte Brontes first novel in which she audaciously inhabits the voice & consciousness of a man William Crimsworth. Like Jane Eyre he is parentless; like Lucy Snowe in Villette he leaves the certainties of England to forge a life in Brussels. But as a man William has freedom of action & as a writer Bronte is correspondingly liberated exploring the relationship between power & sexual desire. Williams first person narration reveals his attraction to the dominating directress of the girls school where he teaches played out in the schools secret garden. Balanced against this is his more temperate relationship with one of his pupils Frances Henri in which mastery & submission interplay. The Professor was published only after Charlotte Brontes death; today it gives us a fascinating insight into the first stirrings of her supreme creative imagination.