This paper examines how Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot show a consciousness of themselves as artists through the reading act of their heroines, Jane Eyre [Jane Eyre] and Maggie Tulliver [The Mill on the Floss]. Both heroines seek in books the keys to understand a severe reality, and try to compensate for their inexperience by reading books. A comparison of these reading heroines not only shows that they reflect the alienation and struggle of their creators as female artists facing a double standard for women writers in the nineteenth century, but also clarifies the characteristics of these two writers.