Shirley II

Following the tremendous popular success of _Jane Eyre,_ which earned her

lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a

sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as

Monday morning." Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and

Luddite revolts of 1811-12, _Shirley_ (1849) is the story of two contrasting

heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive

atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of

single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley

Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from

convention.

A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of

_Jane Eyre, Shirley_ demonstrates the full range of Brontë's literary talent.

_"Shirley_ is a revolutionary novel," wrote Brontë biographer Lyndall Gordon.

_"Shirley_ follows _Jane Eyre_ as a new exemplar but so much a forerunner of

the feminist of the later twentieth century that it is hard to believe in her

actual existence in 1811-12. She is a theoretic possibility: what a woman

might be if she combined independence and means of her own with intellect.

Charlotte Brontë imagined a new form of power, equal to that of men, in a

confident young woman [whose] extraordinary freedom has accustomed her to

think for herself....Shirley [is] Brontë's most feminist novel."