ABSTRACT
Unlike her siblings, especially Emily, Charlotte Brontë did not consider herself a musician.1 As she knew all too well, her lack of musical skill was a strike against her in the competitive market for governesses: writing to her good friend Ellen Nussey in 1840 about a potential employer’s stipulations, Brontë declared that “she wants music and singing. I can’t give her music and singing; so of course the negotiation is null and void.”2 Several years later, when endowing Jane Eyre with qualifications for governessing, Brontë took care to allow her heroine to advertise greater competence, claiming proficiency in music as well as drawing and French (chapter ten).
