Shirley

1849, 1974 Penguin Classics edition
Charlotte Brontë
Shirley: A Tale
Original price $4.95, bought newish?
A bit worn paperback
C-

Easily the worst of Brontë's novels, this is also the worst novel I've read so far in this project.  The other C-s are all part of that Shakespeare collection, so it's not like I'll be getting rid of them.  With this book, I'll decide later whether to keep the discrete C-s.  As for why this scores so low, it  blends a boring historical plot of the early days (1811-12) of the Industrial Revolution with not one but two icky romances.  The best two things about it are the mockery of three Yorkshire curates (based on actual people, including ironically her future husband) and the women's rights pleas.  Even more than Jane Eyre, this novel shows the difficulties of single middle-class girls and women, who had so few options.  In fact, Brontë puts the words of a negative reviewer of Jane Eyre into the mouths of some upper-class women who are berating a governess.

This makes it all the more frustrating that she gives her two intelligent co-heroines, the title character and Caroline, such unpleasant suitors.  Robert Moore is focused on money over emotion, to the point that he proposes to clever, beautiful Shirley only because she's an heiress.  Caroline lapses into a Marianne-Dashwood-like fever brought on by months of rejection, only to be saved by finding out that Shirley's ex-governess is Caroline's long-lost mother.

As for the romance between Robert's brother and Shirley, here's Louis Moore talking about the woman he loves, except wishing that she were poor:  "Something to tame first, and teach afterwards: to break in and then to fondle. To lift the destitute proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over, and then to be indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never indulged before; to see her alternately irritated and subdued about twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient mother of about a dozen children, only now and then lending little Louis a cordial cuff by way of paying the interest of the vast debt she owes his father."  That this is exactly the kind of man that Shirley wants, someone to tame the "lioness" that everyone sees her as, does not make it more palatable to me.

The first third of the 560-page novel is the dullest, the last third the most unpleasant.  The story behind the story is much more interesting, although tragic.  The author's three surviving siblings all died during 1848-49, and yet Charlotte continued to struggle to write.  Also, the title is interesting in that Shirley herself doesn't show up till several chapters in (part of why the first third is boring), and she has been given a boy's name and jokes about how she would act if she were Captain Keeldar, the male version of herself.  This is weird for someone born in the 20th century, because of course "Shirley" suggests Miss Temple.  In fact, the popularity of this novel changed "Shirley" from a boy's name to a girl's.