Shirley
Charlotte Brontë
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars
3.75
· Steam/Spice level: 1 of 5
Glimpses and kisses [?]
· 44 ratings · 496 pages · Published: 01 Apr 1998
Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning." Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.
A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Brontë's literary talent. "Shirley is a revolutionary novel," wrote Brontë biographer Lyndall Gordon. "Shirley follows Jane Eyre as a new exemplar but so much a forerunner of the feminist of the later twentieth century that it is hard to believe in her actual existence in 1811-12. She is a theoretic possibility: what a woman might be if she combined independence and means of her own with intellect. Charlotte Brontë imagined a new form of power, equal to that of men, in a confident young woman [whose] extraordinary freedom has accustomed her to think for herself....Shirley [is] Brontë's most feminist novel."
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- victorian 12
- historical 11
- contemporary 3
- poor heroine 3
- independent heroine 2
- rich heroine 2
- m-f romance 2
- georgian 1
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- childfree 1
- queer awakening 1
- friends to lovers 1
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- found family 1
- neurodivergent mc 1
- christian 1
- small town 1
- cheerful/happy heroine 1
- competent heroine 1
- shy heroine 1
- sweet/gentle heroine 1
- virgin heroine 1
- grumpy/cold hero 1
- sweet/gentle hero 1
- rich hero 1
- ceo/tycoon hero 1
- political/court intrigue 1
- third person pov 1
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