Shirley

Description

Shirley, A Tale is a social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë, first published in 1849. It was Brontë’s second published novel after Jane Eyre. The novel is set in Yorkshire in 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

Shirley focuses on two protagonists, both women:  Caroline Helstone and Shirley Keeldar. The narratives of the two protagonists show the gulf in the lived experience of women in early 19th-century England during the Industrial Revolution. Caroline is an 18-year-old young woman who lives in Yorkshire with her uncle, the Rev. Matthew Helstone, as her parents are dead. She has no money of her own and she and her uncle live in modest circumstances, struggling to afford the signs of respectability which society demands. She is in love with her cousin Robert Moore, a mill owner of whom her uncle doesn’t approve. She is intelligent but timid and assumes that her life will never amount to anything and that she will remain a burden on her uncle.

Shirley, on the other hand, enjoys a life of privilege. She is 21 and the only child of a wealthy family. Her parents are both dead, and she has inherited their estate and the wealth that goes along with it. She lives with her former governess, Mrs. Pryor, but she has the unusual freedom to make her own decisions, despite being a woman. She is keen to exercise her independence in areas that are highly unusual for women at the time the novel is set, such as business and investment decisions to manage and spend her own money.