Shirley, Charlotte Bronte. rating = 5

it really isn't about Shirley at all. first we meet three curates, and then the rector, and then the miller, Robert Moore, and then eventually we get around to Caroline, the rector's niece and Moore's cousin. just when we think that Caroline and Robert are becoming close, oops, reality. no time for whims. then enters Shirley, finally, and she brings other people in with her as well. just when you think you've gotten everybody figured out, something new becomes obvious, and the relationships between the characters shift. again. everything, though, is superbly realistic (if sometimes a bit convenient), and all is based and firmly set in historical context.

I don't know; is it just me? I thoroughly enjoyed this book. much more than Wuthering Heights, and more than Jane Eyre too. I wish I had read Shirley, oh, a decade or two ago...

I especially like how the reader has no idea who "Shirley" even is until about? halfway through the book. and, back in Bronte's time, one would assume Shirley to be a man, so that would come as a surprise as well. a brilliant stroke.

there are so many view points and little stories within the story; the tale really comes alive. I can picture this place, which apparently even by Bronte's day was much changed. the social commentary is interesting without being too preachy, as different characters have different ways of seeing things. it rather balances out. Charlotte knows how to write... I wonder, since Wuthering Heights was Emily's first attempt at a novel, how very superb SHE would have become as well. both of them are very inventive in how they spin their yarns.

Charlotte does seem to write very long sentences. she also seems to discuss more about the fine points of nature, both mother nature and the nature of the characters... in contrast to Emily. this is mostly why I prefer her of the two, I suppose.

I definitely liked the ending of Shirley (romantic as it is) over that of Jane Eyre. I like how the endings suited the characters... as this story isn't just about one person, but several. actually, a whole slew of them ;) it is slightly eyebrow-raising when people turn out to be/ end up related to each other... I think though that Charlotte pokes fun at that a bit herself, when Robert teases Caroline that Shirley's mysterious lover must be none other than Caroline's uncle, and that they will soon be married, and Shirley will be her aunt.

here are some favorite quotes. the page numbers are from the omnibus I'm reading Charlotte and Emily Bronte: The Complete Novels.

"Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation: against modest, single-minded, righteous , and brave resistance to encroachment, is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous ambition to possess. God defend the right!"

"God often defends the powerful." (462)

"I mean to say nothing: but I can think what I please, you know, Mr. Helstone, both about France and England; and about revolutions, and regicides, and restorations in general; and about the divine right of kings, which you often stickle for in your sermons, and about the duty of non-resistance, and the sanity of war, and---" (463)

imagination discussed (sarcastically, I do hope) on 467.

"You seem a fine fellow," said Moore, quite coolly and drily; "you don't care for showing me that you are a double-dyed hypocrite, that your trade is fraud: you expect indeed to make me laugh at the cleverness with which you play your coarsely farcical part, while at the same time you think you are deceiving the men behind you." (511)

from the beginning of Chapter Ten on 528 to "Long may it be ere England really becomes a nation of shop-keepers!" on 529--- sounds way too much like modern capitalist America.

"...other people solve it by saying, 'Your place is to do good to others, to be helpful whenever help is wanted.' That is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine for the people who hold it; but I perceive that certain sets of human beings are very apt to maintain that other sets should give up their lives to them and their service, and then they requite them by praise: they call them devoted and virtuous. Is this enough? Is it to live? Is there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that existence which is given away to others, for want of something of your own to bestow it on? I suspect there is. Does virtue lie in abnegation of self? I do not believe it. Undue humility makes tyranny; weak concession creates selfishness. .... Each human being has his share of rights. I suspect it would conduce to happiness and welfare of all, if each knew his allotment, and held to it as tenaciously as a martyr to his creed." (532)

"...I know certain lonely, quite untrodden glades, carpeted green. I know groups of trees that ravish the eye with their perfect, picture-like effects: rude oak, delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered in contrast; and ash trees stately as Saul, standing isolated, and superannuated wood-giants clad in bright shrouds of ivy. Miss Keeldar, I could guide you." (550)

"Obtrusiveness is a crime; forwardness is a crime; and both disgust: but love!--- no purest angel need blush to love! And when I see or hear either man or woman couple shame with love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations debased. Many who think themselves refinded ladies and gentlemen, and on whose lips the word 'vulgarity' is forever hovering, cannot mention 'love' without betraying their own innate and imbecile degradation: it is a low feeling in their estimation, connected only with low ideas for them."

"You describe three-fourths of the world, Caroline." (603)

"Shirley, you chatter so, I can't fasten you: be still. And after all, authors' heroines are almost as good as authoress's heroes." (620)

"Say, Mr. Yorke!" was the answer, the speaker meantime walking fast from wall to wall of the oak-parlour. "Say? I have a great deal to say, if I could get it out in lucid order which I never can do." (628)

"My consolation is, indeed, that God hears many a groan, and compassionates much grief which man stops his ears against, or frowns on with impotent contempt. I say impotent, for I observe that to such grievances as society cannot readily cure, it usually forbids utterance, on the pain of its scorn: this scorn being only a tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. People hate to be reminded of ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy: such reminder, in forcing on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and shakes their self-complacency." (639)

I intend to finish the rest of the omnibus I'm reading before I compare the Bronte novels too much or discuss much else about them... I want to read Anne's The Tenant as well, if I can... I don't have it but it might be available to read online... anyway, I'm trying for just first impressions in these entries here.

ok ok and THEN I'll write something about Deliverer...