A much-quoted sentence from Coleridge's Aids to Reflection proclaims that ‘Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation; but a Life. – Not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a living Process.’ An examination of religion in the fiction of the Brontës must address the question of how the authors dealt with Christianity as the very substance of daily life. Interaction with and obligations to one's fellow-creatures form part of everyday existence for any human being, fictive or real, and the functions of the individual in his/her relations with other people are often raised in the following pages. But though many Brontë characters are keenly aware of, and labour to fulfil, duties both to people in their immediate surroundings and to larger communities, their most urgent concern is with their own selves. Consequently, this chapter devotes a good deal of space to the obligation of the individual to assume responsibility for his/her own life.

It is an obligation from which no leading Brontë character, male or female, is excused, no matter how constrained the latter's situation may be. It is significant that not even the Brontë heroine whose predicament comes closest to long-term submission under patriarchal rule, Caroline Helstone in Shirley, exempts herself from the duty to create a meaningful existence for herself.