Reading Order
ShirleyShirley Reading Order
Shirley (1849) by Charlotte Brontë is her second novel and the most socially and historically ambitious of her works — a story set during the Luddite disturbances of 1811-12 in Yorkshire, centered on two women whose contrasting personalities and situations (Caroline Helstone, the dependent niece of a rector, and Shirley Keeldar, the independent heiress of Fieldhead) illuminate the position of women in relation to the social upheaval around them. The novel was begun before Anne's death and completed after it, and the sorrow of that loss pervades the later sections. Shirley is Charlotte Brontë's most overtly political novel — its portrait of the mill owner Robert Moore (a character partly inspired by her friend's cousin, later her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls) and his conflict with the Luddites connects the domestic world of Charlotte's other fiction to the industrial history of her Yorkshire landscape. The novel has been criticized for structural looseness but has been increasingly valued for the radicalism of its portrait of Shirley Keeldar as an alternative model of female independence.
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Shirley (1849)
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Shirley
Charlotte Brontë·1849
Shirley — Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Shirley Keeldar, and what makes her different from Charlotte Brontë's other heroines?
Shirley is wealthy, independent, landed (she owns Fieldhead), and capable — 'Captain Keeldar,' she calls herself, insisting on managing her own estate and her own relationships on her own terms. She represents Charlotte Brontë's vision of what a woman could be if she had the economic independence that makes genuine freedom of action possible, and she is the only Brontë heroine who is not financially dependent on anyone. Some critics have identified Shirley with Emily Brontë ('what Emily Brontë would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity'), and the character does share Emily's vigour and independence. But Shirley is also eventually romantic and eventually conventional in her marriage choice — her independence is real but does not extend to resistance to the social institution of marriage itself.
What are the Luddite disturbances, and how do they feature in the novel?
The Luddite movement of 1811-12 was an organized campaign of machine-breaking by Yorkshire cloth workers who feared that the introduction of labor-saving machinery would destroy their livelihoods. Charlotte Brontë researched the disturbances carefully using her father's memories and local newspapers, and the attack on Robert Moore's mill and its suppression by the military are based on actual events. The political content is handled more complexly than the term 'Luddite novel' suggests: Charlotte has sympathy for the workers' suffering (the starvation in the area is vividly rendered) but also for Moore's position (he has sunk his capital in machinery he needs to survive commercially). Her unwillingness to resolve the political tension clearly is part of what makes Shirley a more complicated social novel than most of its Victorian contemporaries.
Is Caroline Helstone based on Charlotte Brontë's real life?
Caroline is the more autobiographical of the two heroines — her lack of money and independence, her depression, her dependence on the kindness of others, and her suppressed love for Robert Moore reflect aspects of Charlotte Brontë's own situation more directly than Shirley does. The 'old maid' subplot — in which Caroline watches two older women who never married and wonders if that will be her fate — is Charlotte Brontë's most direct treatment of the position of educated women without resources or husbands, and was recognized by contemporary women readers as unusually honest about the specific psychological burdens of female dependence.
In what order should I read Charlotte Brontë's novels?
Charlotte published four novels: Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853), and The Professor (posthumous, 1857). Jane Eyre is almost universally recommended as the starting point — it is her most immediately gripping and most fully realized novel. Villette is generally considered her most artistically ambitious and is the choice of many critics as her finest work. Shirley is the most historically minded and rewards reading in the context of Victorian industrial history. The Professor is the weakest of the four (it was written before Jane Eyre and is clearly a trial run for the materials Villette later uses) and is best read last, for context.
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