Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (best books to read for teens .TXT) 📕
Description
Shirley, published in 1849, was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel after Jane Eyre. Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of Jane Eyre, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features strong pleas for the recognition of women’s intellect and right to their independence of thought and action.
Set in the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Napoleonic period of the early 19th Century, the novel describes the confrontations between textile manufacturers and organized groups of workers protesting the introduction of mechanical looms. Three characters stand out: Robert Moore, a mill-owner determined to introduce modern methods despite sometimes violent opposition; his young cousin Caroline Helstone, who falls deeply in love with Robert; and Shirley Keeldar, a rich heiress who comes to live in the estate of Fieldhead, on whose land Robert’s mill stands. Robert’s business is in trouble, not so much because of the protests of the workers but because of a government decree which prevents him selling his finished cloth overseas during the duration of the war with Napoleon. He receives a loan from Miss Keeldar, and her interest in him seems to be becoming a romantic one, much to the distress of Caroline, who pines away for lack of any sign of affection from Robert.
Shirley Keeldar is a remarkable female character for the time: strong, very independent-minded, dismissive of much of the standard rules of society, and determined to decide on her own future. Interestingly, up to this point, the name “Shirley” was almost entirely a male name; Shirley’s parents had hoped for a boy. Such was the success of Brontë’s novel, however, that it became increasingly popular as a female name and is now almost exclusively so.
Although never as popular or successful as the more classically romantic Jane Eyre, Shirley is nevertheless now highly regarded by critics.
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- Author: Charlotte Brontë
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“And, consequently, there is still discontent, I suppose?” inquired Miss Keeldar.
“Consequently—ye say right—consequently. In course, starving folk cannot be satisfied or settled folk. The country’s not in a safe condition—I’ll say so mich!”
“But what can be done? What more can I do, for instance?”
“Do? Ye can do not mich, poor young lass! Ye’ve gi’en your brass; ye’ve done well. If ye could transport your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay, ye’d happen do better. Folks hate him.”
“William, for shame!” exclaimed Caroline warmly. “If folks do hate him, it is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore himself hates nobody. He only wants to do his duty, and maintain his rights. You are wrong to talk so.”
“I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, yond’ Moore.”
“But,” interposed Shirley, “supposing Moore was driven from the country, and his mill razed to the ground, would people have more work?”
“They’d have less. I know that, and they know that; and there is many an honest lad driven desperate by the certainty that whichever way he turns he cannot better himself; and there is dishonest men plenty to guide them to the devil, scoundrels that reckons to be the ‘people’s friends,’ and that knows nought about the people, and is as insincere as Lucifer. I’ve lived aboon forty year in the world, and I believe that ‘the people’ will never have any true friends but theirseln and them two or three good folk i’ different stations that is friends to all the world. Human natur’, taking it i’ th’ lump, is nought but selfishness. It is but excessive few, it is but just an exception here and there, now and then, sich as ye two young uns and me, that, being in a different sphere, can understand t’ one t’ other, and be friends wi’out slavishness o’ one hand or pride o’ t’ other. Them that reckons to be friends to a lower class than their own fro’ political motives is never to be trusted; they always try to make their inferiors tools. For my own part, I will neither be patronized nor misled for no man’s pleasure. I’ve had overtures made to me lately that I saw were treacherous, and I flung ’em back i’ the faces o’ them that offered ’em.”
“You won’t tell us what overtures?”
“I will not. It would do no good. It would mak no difference. Them they concerned can look after theirseln.”
“Ay, we’se look after werseln,” said another voice. Joe Scott had sauntered forth from the church to get a breath of fresh air, and there he stood.
“I’ll warrant ye, Joe,” observed William, smiling.
“And I’ll warrant my maister,” was the answer.—“Young ladies,” continued Joe, assuming a lordly air, “ye’d better go into th’ house.”
“I wonder what for?” inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker’s somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him; for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master’s mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as wormwood and gall certain business visits of the heiress to the Hollow’s countinghouse.
“Because there is nought agate that fits women to be consarned in.”
“Indeed! There is prayer and preaching agate in that church. Are we not concerned in that?”
“Ye have been present neither at the prayer nor preaching, ma’am, if I have observed aright. What I alluded to was politics. William Farren here was touching on that subject, if I’m not mista’en.”
“Well, what then? Politics are our habitual study, Joe. Do you know I see a newspaper every day, and two of a Sunday?”
“I should think you’ll read the marriages, probably, miss, and the murders, and the accidents, and sich like?”
“I read the leading articles, Joe, and the foreign intelligence, and I look over the market prices. In short, I read just what gentlemen read.”
Joe looked as if he thought this talk was like the chattering of a pie. He replied to it by a disdainful silence.
“Joe,” continued Miss Keeldar, “I never yet could ascertain properly whether you are a Whig or a Tory. Pray, which party has the honour of your alliance?”
“It is rayther difficult to explain where you are sure not to be understood,” was Joe’s haughty response; “but as to being a Tory, I’d as soon be an old woman, or a young one, which is a more flimsier article still. It is the Tories that carries on the war and ruins trade; and if I be of any party—though political parties is all nonsense—I’m of that which is most favourable to peace, and, by consequence, to the mercantile interests of this here land.”
“So am I, Joe,” replied Shirley, who had rather a pleasure in teasing the overlooker, by persisting in talking on subjects with which he opined she, as a woman, had no right to meddle—“partly, at least. I have rather a leaning to the agricultural interest, too; as good reason is, seeing that I don’t desire England to be under the feet of France, and that if a share of my income comes from Hollow’s Mill, a larger share comes from the landed estate around it. It would not do to take any measures injurious to the farmers, Joe, I think?”
“The dews at this hour is unwholesome for females,” observed Joe.
“If you make that remark out of interest in me, I have merely to assure you that I am impervious to cold. I should not mind taking my turn to watch the mill one of these summer nights, armed with your musket, Joe.”
Joe Scott’s chin was always rather prominent. He poked it out, at this speech, some inches farther than usual.
“But—to go back to my sheep,” she proceeded—“clothier and mill-owner as I am, besides farmer, I cannot get out of my head a certain idea that we manufacturers and persons of business are sometimes a
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