Shirley, Chapters XXV-XXX

Dear Mary Beth,

I think you made a very good point with the passage you quoted about Shirley not doing much with her gift. The Bronte sisters are certainly not the only literary greats whose destitution drove them to write. Dickens and Poe come immediately to mind, but of course there are many others. So although the Bronte sisters endured much misery in their lives, the world is a much better place because of it. These writers driven to the pen out of need were fortunate enough in their misfortune to have had the requisite education needed to write what they did. As you pointed out, how many people had that same potential and education but lived in luxury and thus had not the need to make money by writing? And how many more had the potential and the need to make money, but not the education to make them literate? How many geniuses have gone utterly undiscovered simply because of their situations? I suppose we should be grateful for the ones history produced for us.

As for this section of the novel, I think there are some important things going on here. First, we find out (as does Caroline) that Mrs. Pryor is actually Caroline's mother. After this revelation, Caroline's health immediately begins to improve. I think this is significant because it shows that Caroline's illness is not just the result of her pining after Robert (I admit, that's what it seemed to me at first). It's much bigger than that and gives, I think, Caroline's character more depth.

Shirley, too, has a lot going on in these chapters. Her family comes to visit, including the family tutor, Louis Moore, who is also Robert's brother. Thus begins a parade of suitors before Shirley and pressure for her to marry as soon as possible. The major hint of where her heart truly lies, though, comes when she is bitten by a dog. She fears she now has rabies and will die soon but tells no one what happened, despite the obvious change in her disposition. No one, that is, but Louis. She tells him the truth. We find out in the following chapter that Louis is in love with Shirley and begin to suspect that she returns his affections.

Louis's arrival in the novel made me realize that Charlotte seems to include doubling consistently in her novels. When Caroline first sees Louis approach Robert and Hortense's house, she thinks it is Robert but at the same time knows it is not. They also both have a relationship of some kind with Shirley. Robert mistakenly thinks that Shirley loves him, but it is Louis that she truly loves. There is some doubling with Caroline and Shirley, too. Shirley is, as I've mentioned before, what Caroline wants to be. Robert even proposes to Shirley (as is revealed in this section) although he has all along loved Caroline. There is also some doubling in Charlotte's other novels, famously in Jane Eyre with Jane and Bertha, and in Villette with Lucy and Polly. I think it's particularly interesting in Shirley that there is doubling with both men and women, whereas in Charlotte's other novels (and in most novels of the period), the doubling is limited to female characters, a reflection of the Victorian attitude that women are essentially interchangeable.

I think it's time to wrap up this letter. I'll let you finish off the final 7 chapters of this wonderful book and be the first to give your opinion of the ending. Before I do, though, I'll prod you with the cliffhanger from the end of chapter 30: Robert is shot by one of the workers!

Your Friend,
Amber