Charlotte Bronte - Shirley

Hm. Don't know what to make of Shirley. I read the first chapter - sarcastic portrait of 3 spoilt young curates - and really liked it, but it quickly became clear that the curates were just side characters. Barely.

The story is, loosely, about 2 young women and 2 young men: Caroline Helstone and Shirley Keeldar, and Robert and Louis Moore. (Yes, brothers...) 

You can probably imagine the ensuing love quadrangle, but it goes like this. Caroline and Robert, who are cousins without blood relation, are secretly in love with each other. But Robert's business is struggling, and Caroline has no money, so he never gets round to making her an offer.

Meanwhile the sassy heiress Shirley swoops in and rescues Robert with a loan and they spend plenty of time talking business. Robert, allowing pragmatism to overrule sentiment, proposes to Shirley - who rejects him.

Turns out Shirley is in love with Robert's brother Louis, who Bronte seems to have pulled out of nowhere - ta dah! - and he feels the same. 

Oh and Caroline, who thought she was an orphan, is reunited with her long-lost mum - Shirley's old governess. And they all lived happily ever after.

Apart from the plot, I think Shirley suffers from weak characterisation for the 4 main characters. They are equally bland. Shirley Keeldar's most interesting moment was when she referred to herself as a man, but Bronte suddenly started to emphasize how feminine she was. Likewise Robert Moore had potential when, faced with angry protestors (his former mill workers, whom he had sacked in favour of machines), told them to piss of: "Hear me! - I'll make my cloth as I please".

But then he lost his personality. As for Louis and Caroline, they never had any.

My favourite bits of the book were the glimpses of Yorkshire during the Industrial Revolution.

"Time wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England began to look pleasant: her fields grew green, her hills fresh, her gardens blooming; but at heart she was no better: still her poor were wretched, still their employers were harassed: commerce, in some of its branches, seemed threatened with paralysis, for the war continued; England's blood was shed and her wealth lavished: all, it seemed, to attain most inadequate ends."

And I like Bronte when she's philosophical:

[SHIRLEY] "Can labour alone make a human being happy?"

[CAROLINE] "No, but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture."

I especially enjoy Bronte's depiction of wise children, like little Rose Yorke patiently explaining to Caroline her plans to explore the world:

"In a day's wandering, you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse, each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was overcast; as the weather was wet of fair, dark or bright. Nothing changes in Briarfield Rectory: the plaster of the parlour-ceilings, the paper on the walls, the curtains, the carpets, chairs, are still the same. [...] Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank."