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Shirley

By Brontë, Charlotte|Minogue, Sally|Minogue, Sally
Shirley

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Details

Authors: Brontë, Charlotte|Minogue, Sally|Minogue, Sally
Copyright: 1993
Format: Paperback
GTIN13: 9781853260643
ISBN10: 1853260649
Page Count: 528
Dimensions: 5.0x1.1x7.6
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
Jacket Notes: Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Bronte 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 Bronte's literary talent.

Strand Notes

(Wordsworth Classics). The novel is set among the cloth mills of the author's native Yorkshire and realizes the full drama of the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars, when labor-saving machinery was smashed by desperate, unemployed workers. 482p. Pap.

Description

With an Introduction and Notes by Sally Minogue

The Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman's role is and can be. Their male counterparts - Louis, the powerless tutor, and Robert, his cloth-manufacturing brother - also stand at odds to society's expectations. The novel is set in a period of social and political ferment, featuring class disenfranchisement, the drama of Luddite machine-breaking, and the divisive effects of the Napoleonic Wars.

But Charlotte Bront s particular strength lies in exploring the hidden psychological drama of love, loss and the quest for identity. Personal and public agitation are brought together against the dramatic backdrop of her native Yorkshire. As always, Bront challenges convention, exploring the limitations of social justice whilst telling not one but two love stories.

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