Dear Mary Beth,
I enjoyed your letter in its long-winded entirety. Though I am not drinking a hot beverage while writing this, as you did, I rarely ever sit down to read without making myself a cup of tea first. There's just something about a hot beverage that goes great with literature.
I cannot think of a more appropriate author to begin this project with than Charlotte Bronte. As you know, I'm new to Shirley but dearly love (and have extensively studied) Jane Eyre. I originally bought my copy of Shirley (which, oddly enough, does not have endnotes, but if it did have endnotes, I would use them as you do--chapter by chapter) from the famous Strand Bookstore in New York City on a trip there in 2009 and have been meaning to read it ever since. Charlotte Bronte (as well as Anne and Emily) has been a huge influence in my intellectual life, and so far Shirley seems even more Charlotte than Jane Eyre did.
One of the first things I noticed in Shirley was its biting criticism of Victorian attitudes toward women. The first passage that really struck me is too long to quote in its entirety but occurs in Chapter VII when Caroline notices Robert's increasingly cool behavior toward her. The passage begins: "A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation, a lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery." Several lines down, the passage becomes almost disturbing: "You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation; close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob." The pain and anger in this passage can only have come from the tragedies and difficulties of Charlotte's life. Just a few pages later, the omniscient narrator is plumbing the depths of Mr. Helstone's (one of your not-so-wonderful clergymen) mind while the Sykes women are visiting him:
"At heart he could not abide sense in women. He liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible, because they were then in reality what he held them to be--inferior, toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour, and to be thrown away.... Hannah was his favorite. Harriet, though beautiful, egotistical, and self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for him. She had some genuine self-respect amidst much false pride....Hannah, on the contrary, demanded no respect, only flattery."
In Chapter IX, when Robert Moore is visiting the Yorke family, the topic of marriage comes up, and Martin Yorke, the youngest of the three Yorke sons (his age is not given, but the oldest boy is fourteen) has this to say: "I mean to always hate women. They're such dolls; they do nothing but dress themselves finely, and go swimming about to be admired. I'll never marry. I'll be a bachelor." Clearly, Charlotte is trying to make a point with all these passages; I'm anxious to see how these attitudes play out in the rest of the novel.
The second thing about Shirley that seems so very Charlotte to me is how vivid and real the characters are. Most fiction I read, even the very good fiction, leaves me with some level of awareness that I am indeed reading fiction--that the characters don't exist and everything about them comes from someone's mind. But with Charlotte's works, I always have a hard time believing that the characters aren't real, even the minor characters like William Farren. They are as real to me--sometimes more real, even--than people I actually know. As you mentioned, Charlotte drew on her sisters and herself for many of her novels' characters, but there is an even greater magic at work here.
I agree with your assessment that many of the issues in Shirley are still relevant today. Robert Moore wants to use machinery to cut back on his labor costs; his laid-off former workers respond by destroying the equipment before it gets to Moore's mill. Today, most companies, and even government offices and non-profit organizations are looking for ways to cut costs and save money, while many people have given up on trying to find new work and lay the blame on their former employers or big corporations in general.
Socio-economic factors are also very apparent in Shirley, as they are in the minds of many today. Robert Moore seems contemptuous of his laid-off workers, unable to sympathize with them, with the exception of William Farren and his reasonable manner of approaching Robert. Charlotte makes the class status of her characters very clear (Jane is a governess, "poor, obscure, plain and little"), and, as you pointed out, tends to focus on the working class and their interactions with the middle and upper classes. This time around, she seems to her focus seems a bit opposite--the working class, while still playing a key role so far in the novel, is more in the background. Again, I'm interested to see where this goes.
So far, I'm really enjoying Shirley. I think Charlotte excels at third-person omniscient narration (as you pointed out, her first-person narrators are emotionally distant and often unreliable), making Shirley an engaging read. The women's issues that she brought up in Jane Eyre continue with gusto in this novel, and I'm anxious to see which side of Robert Moore (I haven't quite decided whether I like him yet) prevails.
Very Truly Yours,
Amber
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