Oxford World Classics, 2008, 571 p including vi p Introduction by Janet Gezari, vi p Note on the Text, iii Select bibliography, vi p Chronology of Charlotte Brontë and xxx p Explanatory Notes. First published in 1849.

Nineteenth century novels are now to some extent a historical curiosity. Life has changed since then, and so too have expectations of the novel. Books like Shirley were written for a slower paced time, for leisurely afternoon or evening reading, for diversion as well as entertainment and enlightenment. Digression and length were to be welcomed. This is evident in the novels of Sir Walter Scott but in whose work for some reason the longueurs cease to be noticeable after a while. To me though, it seemed Shirley took the tendency to extremes and the longueurs the more irritating. I took longer to read this than I did War and Peace. (Admittedly I was younger then, but arguably I had less time for reading.)

Shirley’s first chapter is an entirely unnecessary depiction of the conversations between three local curates, which has nothing at all to do with the subsequent plot. The second has a bit more purpose, laying out the background of the times (to which Brontë is looking back from forty years later) as a local Mill owner Mr Robert Moore, Caroline’s cousin, is bringing in machines to speed up his factory’s processes. In this he is opposed by the working men whose jobs will be replaced. For many passages nothing much of note seems to happen. A more singular drawback is that the titular Shirley (heiress of the estate of Fieldhead) is not encountered until a full third of the way through the book. Here too is a common trope of the nineteenth century novel, the revelation of the hidden identity of one of the characters. The book understandably also has the attitudes of the middle class of its time. Volume II, Chapter VII has the heading, “WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED.” I suspect none of these would get past a modern-day writers’ group, agent or editor.

Main viewpoint character Caroline Helstone is living in the house of the local vicar, her uncle Mr Helstone, since her father, not a good man by the accounts she has heard, is dead and her mother had in any case long since left her marriage, whereabouts unknown. Mr Helstone has views on marriage: he takes a very dim view of having to officiate when people are committing what he considers an act of folly, yet he had done so himself. At an early point in the book Caroline asks her uncle, “Why were you so inconsistent as to marry?” and he replies, “Every man is mad once or twice in his life,” chiding Caroline not to confuse the general with the particular.

There are other aperçus. Caroline tells us, “In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked…. All have a certain expression stamped on their features, which seems to say, ‘I know I am the standard of what is proper; let every one therefore whom I approach, or who approaches me, keep a sharp look-out, for wherein they differ from me – be the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle, or practice – therein they are wrong.'” Workman William Farren says, “‘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.’”

Shirley has some good lines. Of a suitor, Samuel Fawthrop Wynne, (one of several who ask for her hand) Shirley’s uncle, Mr Stymson. who presumes to be her guide, says, ‘In all respects he is more than worthy of you.” She replies, “‘And I ask in what sense is that man worthy of me?’” and goes on to say that she would refuse a peer of the realm if she could not value him for himself. She says to Caroline, “‘Men, I believe, fancy women’s minds something like those of children. Now, that is a mistake.’” When Caroline demurs and says, “‘authors’ heroines are almost as good as authoresses’ heroes,’” Shirley says, “‘Not at all; women read men more truly than men read women,’” but that a magazine paper asserting that would never be accepted by any publication. This is a subtle feminism, certainly, but it is there to be read.

In both the novel’s time and Brontë’s a single woman was always thought to be conniving to trap a husband and when denied a particular quarry was described as disappointed. As Mrs Yorke says to Caroline, “‘Every sister with an eligible single brother is considered most kind by her spinster friends.’” Caroline denies any such predatory intentions for herself but the overall plot is entirely taken up with the prospects of marriage, both for Caroline and for Shirley, and the obstacles to that end.

Brontë mentions Yorkshire Doric, which some of the characters speak. Most of these words – described as dialect in the Notes on the Text – are still in use in Scots.

While obviously the Brontë sisters’ works are important in the history and development of the novel in English, for the reasons I mentioned above I could not seriously recommend Shirley to the modern reader except in so far as they are interested in that history.

Pedant’s corner:- nineteenth century usages of the chid (chided,) sunk (sank) and rung (rang) kind. An inconsistency in spelling – exstasies but later, ecstacy, – etc, etc. I add plus points for “the three Misses Sykes,” “the Misses Pearson,” “the Misses Wynne.” Otherwise; a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “the trot of a little nag’s hoofs were, five minutes after, heard in the yard” (the trot … was heard,) Moses’ (Moses’s,) “‘I am tried of it'” (‘tired of it’ makes more sense,) milleniums (millenia, but it was in dialogue,) “knows nought about” (naught,) hoofs (in my youth the plural was always ‘hooves’,) “blue orbs” (up till page 340 Caroline’s eyes are described as brown; from then on they are always blue.) In the explanatory Notes; “the intervention if Minerva” (of Minerva,) Ulysses’ (Ulysses’s.)