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Shir Ley

A swirl of social issues, beginning with a Luddite attack, continuing with an attempted destruction of the mill, and then finally through attempted murder of owner, matched with poverty and the Napoleonic Wars, symbolically discussed through relationships

Introduction (Andrew and Judith Hook)

• Relation to Her Other Books
  • Similarity: pits world of passion and imagination against the world of duty
  • Difference: instead of waging this battle within one person (Lucy Snowe, Jane Eyre), she shows the problem as distributed within a whole social microcosm
  • Summary: Examines similar theme (injustice in the form of the denial of emotional life) across the social world, not within a private one
• Personal Background
  • Written amid deaths
  • Writes most of first volume, but interrupted by Branwell’s death (Sep 1848)
  • Dec 1848, Emily dies (consumption)
  • In Spring, begins to write again, but Anne falls ill
  • May 1849: Anne dies
  • Aug 1849: Finishes writing it
• Historical Background
  • Written and published during anxiety about Chartism (1848-9)
  • Set 1811-12
    • She studied up on newspapers (Leeds Mercury 1812-4)
    • Luddite Riots
    • Napoleonic Wars
    • Orders in Council, 1810
      • Measures to wage “economic war” against France
      • Depresses manufacture
• Themes
  • 1) Romantic involvement (Shirley Keelar and Louis Moore; Caroline Helstone and Robert Moore)
  • 2) Feminism/governess/tutor themes
  • 3) Yorkshire culture (regionalism)
  • 4) Luddite/workers theme
  • How are they linked? All of them are manifestations of a social order built to deny the world of feeling
    • Groups 2 and 4 suffer from the repressive, cold, heartless social order
    • Group 3 is part of the problem: they’re honest and simple, but also cold and unfeeling
    • Group 1 shows the symbolic resolution of these problems
• Artistic Influences
  • Thackeray
    • To whom she dedicated second printing of Eyre
    • Celebrated him trying to critique and solve “the warped order of things”
  • Scott
    • His historical theme (ie, the 37 year gap; about last generation, not current one)
    • His emphasis on broad social and historical forces
  • Gaskell
    • Worried that her book would sound too much like Mary Barton
      • Wrote to her publishers that Gaskell had “anticipated” her “in scene and incident”
    • She was already writing Shirley when Barton came out (1848)
    • My addition: Caroline Helstone/Robert Moore relationship similar to Margaret Hale/John Thornton relationship in North and South (1855)
      • Perhaps Gaskell was influenced by Bronte?
• Reception
  • North of England, esp Yorkshire, ate it all up
  • Generally a public success, coming on the heels of bestseller Jane Eyre
  • G. H. Lewes, unfavorable (he had liked Eyre)
    • Said it was too patchwork, too various
    • “All unity…is wanting…. The authoress never seems distinctly to have made up her mind as to what she was to do…. All are by turns attempted and abandoned.” (10)
  • Nowadays
    • (Up to 1980s) literary critics dismiss it as not worthy of notice
    • Social historians, however, have understood it in the right light, taking Luddite stuff seriously
• Book’s Thesis
  • Resolution: symbolic one with the two marriages
  • No particular economic solution given, but it does reveal the underlying attitudes that underpin the unfair social order that represses workers and middle-class women alike
    • Diagnosis, but no prescription, I’d say
  • Everyone deserves the right to feel.
• Further Reading
  • Asa Briggs, in Bronte Society Transactions (the strongest viewpoint)
  • E P Thompson (perhaps overly rapt!)
  • Patrick Brantlinger, in Victorian Studies on early unions in English novel (dismissive)

Historical Background

• Napoleonic Wars
  • Beginning: somewhere the French Revolutionary Wars end and Napoleonic Wars begin, but no consensus among historians
    • 9 Nov 1799: Napoleon seized power (one potential start date)
  • Changing coalitions involve different sets of countries against France (sometimes Prussia, UK, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Saxony, etc)
  • For England, the Napoleonic Wars lasted May 18, 1803 (when they end the Treat of Amiens, which made peace between them, but only for a year!) until June 1815, Waterloo
    • Much of England’s involvement consisted in siding with Spain in Peninsular War (1808-14), in which France tries to invade Portugal and Spain (the beginning of “guerilla warfare”)
  • England wants to stop Napoleon, put the monarchy back in power in France (afraid of revolution, republicanism spreading to UK)
  • England has naval supremacy, but only a fraction of the troops France has
    • Judith and Andrew Hook noted that there were more troops brought in to stop Luddites than were with Wellington during Peninsular Wars
  • Napoleon wants to invade England, but prevented from doing so by England’s naval strength
    • Attempts to distract their navy/pull them away from the Channel don’t succeed
  • Despite rising rapidly and conquering most of the Continent, Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia in 1812 cripples France, makes in vulnerable for Waterloo
  • What Changes After It Ends
    • Bourbon Monarchy restored in France
    • Holy Roman Empire dissolved
    • Weakening of Spanish Empire
    • France no longer the dominant power in Europe
    • UK emerges as the world power (commercial, naval)
    • Begins process of nationalism (esp Germany, Italy unified)
      • “it fits the present spirit of the nations” (590) (the June day)
    • Beginning of “balance of power” politics
• Economic Side of Napoleonic Wars
  • Strengths
    • France: better agricultural strength
    • England: better industry; naval strength allows it to keep trading overseas
      • French can’t trade with the New World
  • 1806-10, Napoleon’s Berlin Decrees and further decrees shut off UK from trading with Europe or with any of its territories (called the Continental System)
    • Never wholly worked, but bad enough to worsen an already serious economic crisis
    • Britain Fights Back
      • Orders in Council: neutrals not allowed to trade w/France; UK gets to control and tax the neutral trading to Europe; blocking exportation of of cloth, wool
      • British smugglers get past French ships and into Fr territories
      • England uses Royal Navy to stop France from trading w/anyone by sea
    • But can’t do anything about France’s continental trade
  • French Response to Orders in Council
    • Says it will seize any marine that went to British ports first: ie, if you obey Britain’s Orders in Council, you disobey France
    • Result: America places embargo on trade with France AND England: this is what kills English trade
  • What Effects do Orders in Council Result In?
    • Exports Fall
      • From 1806 to 1808, all export falls by 1/8
      • From 1810 to 1811, export to Europe falls by 20%
    • Imports Fall
      • Raw material imports decrease
      • Imports of cotton fall to 1/7 of previous amount from 1806 to 1807
      • Grain imports falls
    • Higher Grain Costs
      • From 1806-7, prices rise 1/3
    • Reduced Demand for Manufactured Products
      • Underemployment, unemployment, and low wages
    • Business Failures
    • Gold Trickles Out to Europe
  • Opposition to Orders in Council
    • March 1808, London and Liverpool merchants petition Parl to stop them
    • Says we don’t want to endangers peace with USA, through which British wares end up in French-controlled territory
    • Says that if America can’t trade w/Europe, it won’t be able to pay Britain for its wares
    • (This opposition ended up becoming Anti-Corn Law agitation….)
    • 1812: As Luddite riots break out (also in reaction to the three year series of bad harvests 1809-11), manufacturers again appeal for repeal of the Orders
    • Orders in Council revoked summer 1812
• Luddite Movement
  • Begins with lace/hosiery workers in Nottingham, spreading to more areas and industries, upset with machinery replacing workers
  • Name: from Ned Ludd (folklore figure)
  • Soldiers deployed after them
  • Rioters hunted down, hung, transported
  • 1811: the first attacks (weaving industries)
  • Led to creation of unions
  • 1830s: threshing machines in agr. districts
• Labor Organization
  • 1830s: laborers begin to combine
  • 1830s-40s: Chartism, the first large-scale movement
  • 1842: General Strike (org by Chartism)
  • 1867: Reform Act of 1867 (all male householders can vote)
  • 1884: Representation of the People Acts (countryside householders too)
    • But only enfranchises 60% of men
  • 1918: Another Representation act, which allows all men (no property requirements) to vote, and women with property to vote
  • 1928: Another Representation act, allowing women w/out property to vote
  • 1969: Reduction of minimum age from 21 to 18

Folks

• The Curates, Sweeting (the ladies’ favorite, a musician), Donne (whose attempt to court Shirley ends in disaster), Malone (the profligate Irishman who were it not for a little section at the end would make Bronte truly xenophobic)

• Helstone, the Rector of Briarfield, a militaristic pastor (how shocking) who demonstrates the danger of marriage (your man might neglect you to death) and the lamentable connex between the strong arm of the law and that of the clergy; a middle-aged no-funnery who’s hawklike and grim except to pretty young ladies not of his own family group

• Dr. Boultby, the cantankerous Rector of Whinbury, known more for his academicism than his religious duties

• Mr. Hall, the Rector of Nunelly, a nice man who serves his parish, the exception that saves the clergy from outright ruin, disaster, etc. He’s the exception to the military-religious complex.

• Suppleclouth and Barraclough, the two leaders responsible for the riots, assassination attempts, etc who just happen to be both drunkards and both Dissenters. For Bronte, strikes and uprisings = foolish susceptible folks mislead by politically and religiously dissenting alcoholics who come from afar to stir up trouble, as of course the workers couldn’t organize themselves. Thanks, Charlotte.

• Caroline Helstone, the vicar’s long-suffering niece underneath whose sweet exterior rumbles a volcano of feminist sentiment and logic; her sad home-life creates a negative background from which she can achieve stability and happiness via her own virtue (her mother and father had parted b/c dad was abusive; dad neglected little girl then fell into ruin and death, alcoholic); fair, pretty, neat, gentle, but persevering and spirited, not letting herself get degraded by the unreturned love. Shirley on Cary: “quiet as you look, there is both a force and a depth somewhere within, not easily reached or approached.” (265) She gets the dude in the end, but only after both of ‘em get sick, nearly die. Change and whatnot.

• Robert Moore, who learns how to care about his workers, is a half foreigner mill-owner of cloth. “My mill is my castle” (56), he proclaims at opening; independent, manly, dictatorial, eyes-on-the-prize, nothin’ but the biz, leading him to make offer to Shirley despite their not caring about each other; chiseled and fierce in public but generous and kind on the hearth, alternates being frozen and gentle. He’s the “atom” that will get incorporated into society via Caroline: “best wisdom to push the interests of Robert Gerard Moore” and “tendency to isolate his individual person from any community” (60). At first, he thinks he’s only a biz-man. then, tempted by love, he says he can keep the human and the capitalist completely separate (145): seeing Caroline in form of “her cousin, Robert,” not “Mr. Moore,” the mill-owner. 152 Narr says he has two sides; 258 “one for the world and business, and one for the home and leisure,” one is a worker ruled by Reason (as narr termed it, “the disciple of Reason, not a votary of Sense” 152), the other a “dreamer” (ie romantic stuff). Moore = Industry Must Learn How to Become Harmonious Part of Social Fabric.

• The Sykes, the representative industry family with lots of marriageable daughters with good portions to give; they are totally boring and won’t accept anything out of the ordinary

• The Sympsons, Shirley’s cousins who come to monitor this single lady and find her a good husband; they represent the nouveau riche (we know that the “Sympson Grove” that they come from is quite new, not old like Shirley’s demesne). They are narrow minded and won’t accept anything out of the ordinary

• Hortense Moore, the Moore sister; a love of order, neatness, and a prodigious sewer and repairer of lace and stockings; she is the comic Belgian character Bronte likes to put in all her books. She is not at all damned by Bronte, just poked at. She makes funny food, wears funny clothes, has comic fights w/servants etc.

• Louis Moore, the other brother; he is the tutor of little Henry Sympson, the crippled sensitive son that acts kind of like Tiny Tim. he is quiet and reserved; deliberate, quiet, reserved, very intensely sensitive of his dependent status, but he acquires his own freedom by tussling with Shirley’s own independence. He learns to leave away Solitude for community life and leaves Abstraction for real material life (he no longer wants to court abstractions like solitude, but instead appreciate virtues through a real live person).

• Shirley Keeldar, our representative of the land-holding aristocracy, she’s the heiress of the local manor house, Fieldhead, just come of age (21). Clear and dark, with gray eyes, richly colored and always dressed in style, cutely selfish, but kind through distributing her extra cash. However, she’s fierce like Robert in defending her position (she has a fiery speech about never giving up, about defending her house), so she doesn’t want to kill the estab. She’s social and kind, but no CLASS rebel. She’s original, but her love for Louis slightly changes the status of her independence: she willingly gives a measure of it up to become a better person.

• Mrs. Pryor, Shirley’s governess, our example (along with Louis) of the mistreatment of the educating class (governess, tutor) and of the Bad Marriage (she is abused). Not effusive but dignified and wise.

• William Ferran, the tolerant worker misguided by the dissident drunken devils from elsewhere; Moore secretly helps him find a new job; he is our proof that some of the working class is moral and good (although we aren’t to believe that all of them are good). His wife is put in the way of entrepreneurship (ie, a little shop) by Mr. Hall.

• The Yorkes, the representative family of Yorkshire independence and freedoms which can sometimes go astray b/c not kind or generous enough. The father is a dissenter in ever possible way, the mother is a doom-teller with a fancy for very few people, the brothers are mutually antagonistic but all highly original, and the sisters are vivacious pleasing and demand a life that isn’t stultifying or merely domestic (though we learn Jessie Yorke will die young abroad)

Industry, Riots

• Basic Argument: Helstone, Yorke, and Moore
  • Helstone: “he condemned sweepingly the widespread spirit of disaffection against constitutional authorities, the growing indisposition to bear with patience evils he regarded as inevitable,” needing “vigilance” and “when necessary, prompt military coercion.” (83)
    • He’s Tory
  • Yorke: “Mr. Yorke wished to know whether this interference, vigilance, and coercion would feed those who were hungry, give work to those who wanted work and whom no man would hire. He scouted the idea of inevitable evils…. resistance was now a duty” (83)
    • he’s a Jacobin (blanket term for all types of resistance)
    • 85: confident that the Bible insures that justice will eventually be done
  • Moore: Why waste time arguing with each other and worrying about a “vague thing as a sect or government,” calling Yorke a “rebel” and Helstone “cruel and tyrannical” (85)
    • He’s practical, just wants them to focus on the rebels and his broken frames, nothing else
• Role of Religion
  • It is part of the militaristic protection of the manufacturer: religion supports manufacturers
    • 67 “it is a dreadful thing for a parson to be warlike,” narr admits
  • When attack is threatened, Mr. Helstone is his biggest supporter, and he tries to get his curates to go and support Moore too
  • Even its normal activity (sermons) contributes to keeping people down
    • 70 when Helstone demands of Moore what he thinks of “bloody republican France,” Moore says: “I can think what I please, you know, Mr. Helstone, both about France and England; and about revolution, and regicides, and restorations in general; and abuot the divine right of kings, which you also stickle for in your sermons, and the duty of non-resistance, and the sanity of war…”
  • Caroline wishes her uncle were more sympathetic 205
    • He is “rather liberal than good-natured…scrupulously equitable than truly just” 223
  • 301-2: The March
    • The religious leaders, via parade for the religious schools, go out to parade just for demonstration, but it ends up being a real battle when the Dissenting schools show up, resulting in the C o E schools winning
    • Language: “There is no battle in prospect. Our country does not wnat us to fight for it,” admits the Rector (299), and Shirley says “We are not soldiers – bloodshed is not my desire” (299) but….
      • “an opposition procession,” ”’If you wanted a battle, you are likely to get one,’” says Caroline; “They shall not pass!” say the curates; Helstone asks them to keep going “for the honor of the Establishment” (300)
      • “The enemy was sung and stormed down” (301)
      • Helstone and Keelar are ready with weapons—cane, parasol—“to rebuke the slightest breach of orders, the least independent or irregular demonstration” (301), and this order was what won the battle, says the narrator
    • How is it real?
      • They see real soldiers as they march (299)
      • They play “Rule, Britannia” as they march on enemy (301)
      • They actually have a battle and rout the Dissenters (Dissenters, Methodists, Baptists, Independents, Wesleyan)
      • Even the leader of the “enemy” being dissolute and dissenting is there: he’s “the fat Dissenter” “a spirit-merchant by trade” (301)
• Caroline Versus Robert
  • Summary of Positions
    • Method
      • Moore: Rationality of Political Economy, Enlightenment (skewed one way)
      • Caroline: Enlightenment (skewed one way), plus Religion
    • Rights or Duties?
      • Moore: Rights of Individual
      • Caroline: Duty to Social Whole
    • End
      • Moore: Present necessity
      • Caroline: Long-term social harmony
  • How much knowledge does she have? And is it a pure motive?
    • 118: he asks her if she knows about what she’s talking about, but she says at least as it concerns her: she may not know all of political economy, but she knows how whatever does happen, effects the health and harmony of the social fabric
    • She cares about the people getting upset not just for their sake (we know she cares b/c she offers the Farren family all her available cash) but chiefly for Robert’s sake: she doesn’t want people mad at him
    • It IS the “woman’s” part to do so. Whatever, fine.
• Scuffle One: Workers as Machines
  • He says when he thinks about poor, “I do not so much mean the natural, habitual poverty of the working-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in debt,” which he really means “tradesmen” like him (99)
    • PURE MALTHUS, he’s talking about, naturalizing poverty and absolving himself of doing anything
  • Caroline accuses him of treating workers like machines (99-100): “as if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and shears.”
    • She doesn’t like his attitude most of all: his “manner,” not his behavior (so she isn’t socialist, okay)
    • He says, dude, I’m just foreign and don’t know anyone
  • Her response: There should be love there, on both sides.
  • 110: he says Caroline’s method would end in “poverty, misery, bankruptcy,” a common political economic argument
• Scuffle Two: Coriolanus
  • Caroline: You should behave according to its effects on social equilibrium, not according to your “irrational pride,” as the narrator calls it (116)
  • Caroline: Don’t see the workers as homogeneous mob: not all working people are like anything in particular
    • He answers, “You are a little democrat, Caroline.” 118
  • Caroline: Stop being inflexible and hard, don’t have “scorn” anymore: stop acting commanding all of the time, you must request nicely (gee thanks for the revolution of POLITENESS)
    • Coriolanus, like Robert, “does not sympathize with his famished-fellow-men, and insults them” (116), “Was he not faulty as well as great?” (117) she asks
  • This scuffle leads to her reciting Chenier, so we see worker’s rights and the right against tyranny (against Reign of Terror) AND women’s rights (because she clearly as a woman identifies with Chenier’s narrator because she wants a true occupation, wants to use her powers)
• Scuffle Three: Revenge?
  • Caroline: “Because it will set all the neighborhood against you more than ever.” (143)
  • Robert: But it’s my “duty” to “defend my property” (143)
  • Caroline: But they’ll just take revenge on you; that’s short-sighted
  • Robert: Don’t worry; I can protect myself. (144)
  • Robert: You believe that Providence will save me, eh?
    • Cf Martineau, who saw Providence and the necessity of Political Economy to be the same thing, identical
  • Robert: Separation of Spheres
    • Won’t pray for himself or take a wife at the opening of the book, but instead explains that he’s married to work because of his upbringing and can’t do anything else (144)
    • Believes it his “duty to get on,” as Caroline terms it (145)
• Her Later Conversations/Thoughts
  • 188: She wants to avoid being “romantic” and wants to see things “as they were” BUT the problem is that she needs to be important to someone: “because another human being’s eye has failed to meet mine,” and she’ll get that in her mother before Robert
    • So, the human NEEDS sympathy from someone, needs socializing (even Shirley and Louis end up admitting they need other people)
  • Caroline’s ignorance and distance from biz could either validate or invalidate her ability to judge biz
  • See romance as another type of sympathy, as showing your willingness to sympathize (188)
  • 245: Prophesies unrest for everyone in world, not just herself: microcosm of self to society: “omens and disastrous events” she sees in dreams. Mrs. Pryor and Shirley react saying “nonsense!” but Cary was right historically
    • 251: Robert comes in with newspapers that prove that the country is uneasy: she was right!
  • 377: links workers’ plight to that of women
    • On society’s punitive attitude: “such grievances as society cannot readily cure, it usually forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn…. Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and the rich: it disturbs parents.”
    • Smart girl! Look how the “place and occupation” are something that women and the poor both lack
• Shirley
  • 266: Wary about Robert’s capabilities: how far will he go? She’s uneasy about worried about what he’ll do
    • She reacts with economy (putting her house in to order, stopping Mrs. Gill from robbing her) and charity (puts huge fund o’cash together which helps to keep the neighborhood together through this rough patch)
  • 268: She is fierce and defends her position, but will be charitable b/c of religious reasons (typical: keep the system, but add religion)
  • 322: Showing change: more sympa
  • 356: Against using “class” because it forgets individuals
  • 358: Advises Robert to take into consideration character and circumstances, not just blame people
• Robert’s Change
  • 162: Seeds of change are shown b/c Robert respects good men and wants to help them, so he gets him a position as Yorke’s gardener
  • His ultimate bid to save his biz—the proposal to Shirley—ends in such a disaster that he has to retrace everything, rethink everything
  • 505: Five month disappearance was a trip to London and Birmingham to learn the “causes of the present troubles of this country,” “looked a little into reality,” “taught my brain a new lesson, and filled my breast with fresh feelings” despite not having gained “more softness or sentiment” (still won’t tolerate mutiny)
  • 506: “Something there is to look to…beyond a man’s personal interest: beyond the advancement of well-laid schemes. To respect himself, a man must believe he renders justice to his fellow-men. Unless I am more considerate to ignorance, more forbearing to suffering, than I have hitherto been, I shall scorn myself as unjust.”
    • Notice it’s still about self-respect. Whateva.
  • Yet he even goes further and won’t pursue his would-be assassin, even though he knows who it was (the drunkard dissenter Michael Hartley, gee did ya think he’d be drunk and dissenting?)
• Joe and Moore: Political Economy and its Convenient Knowledge of Human “Nature”
  • Joe Scott (his foreman) says that trade has made them conscious: “Trade sharpens yer wits…. I can tell cheese from chalk.” (88)
  • Moore to Joe: “I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because i know so well that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breathes, vice and virtue are ever found blended, and that the proportion not determined by station” (89)
    • He uses this argument to distance himself from their suffering, esp because of laws of political economy: “that because the course of trade does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are sometimes short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong.” (89)
    • Notice that he just accepts the rough parts of trade as part of political economy
  • Thus, he won’t accept that work conditions affect people, either making their lives unbearable (he calls barely surviving “being short of work”) or affects morality (appeal to Enlightenment’s Universal Human Nature)
• Narrator’s Judgment
  • Denies that Moore’s factory was terrible and says that it’s not the terrain of novelists to deal with the “utterly infamous” mill-owners or the “child-torturers, slave-masters and jailers” (90) but instead the average ones, who were nice enough, according to narr’s view
  • “Hope:” Lousy answer, Bronte!
    • Talking about the chances of the children being too cold from having to get up so early in morning: she “hopes” they weren’t (89)
    • 90: “Let us hope they have enough to eat; it would be a pity were it otherwise.”
    • The narrator deliberately bows out of omniscience to protect the factory owner and denies that their could be a way they wouldn’t be mistreated.

Independence/Enlightenment

• Enlightenment concepts are used in the debates about industry, on both sides
  • Typical arg. that Luddites can’t stop progress
    • “Suppose that the building was a ruin and I was a corpse…would that stop invention or exhaust science?—Not for a fraction of a second of time!” (156)
    • Not allowed to question science or political economy
      • cf “Am I the whole body of clothiers in Yorkshire? Answer me that?” He says that because of the laws of competition b/c “if I stopped by way an instant, while the others are rushing on, I should be trodden down….and would my bankruptcy put bread into your hungry children’s mouths?” (157)
      • Instead of questioning competition, he assumes it’s a law
  • Now used in favor of workers: We are humans too
    • William Farren: “I feel that it would be a low principle for a reasonable man to starve to death like a dumb cratur’ – I will n’t do ‘t. I’m not for shedding blood….[or] for pulling down mills and breaking machines…but I’ll talk…. it isn’t right for poor folks to starve.” (157)
      • Even he doesn’t want to talk the whole system down; he’s reasonable (cf “no injustice to be forced to live by labour” 157)
• Relationships Are a Different Story
  • Relationships are seen as possession (cf mother and daughter relationship; the “bondswoman” and “slave” language Caroline and Robert use; the “master” and “student” that Shirley and Louis use)
  • Mamma on Caroline’s mind: “it belongs to me: it is my property—my right” (409)
    • This is the attitude that saves Caroline’s life, giving her a will to live that alone saves her from dying.
  • Love changes the whole discourse over independence
    • You need independence, but you also need love and human intercourse, which practically requires adjusting your behavior accordingly.
• Caroline
  • Linked w/resisting tyranny
    • 119: She loves Andre Chenier’s “Le Jeune Captive:” the Romantic precursor, son of a cloth-merchant, a constitutional monarchist, victim of the Reign of Terror, three days before Robespierre was himself executed
    • Shows that art and politics and personal independence are all intertwined: she loves the poetry, she clearly admires the sentiment (I will live, dangit, I want to live on)
    • And love b/c her recitation of the poem makes Robert 99% fall in love with her
  • She wants a job, an occupation
    • Once she thinks she can’t marry Robert, the occupation of mother leaves her, and now: “Half a century of existence may lay before me. How am I to occupy it?... Where is my place in the world?” (190)
  • She contemplates becoming an old maid and doing what the two local old maids, Miss Ainley and Miss Mann do (ie sewing for benefit of conversion of Jews), but she pines away doing that
    • When folks say to her ”’Your place is to do good to others.’” she responds, “That is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine for the people who hold it; but I perceive that certain human beings are apt to maintain that other sets should give up their lives to them and their service, and that they requite them by praise. Is this enough? Is it to live? Is there not a terrible hollowness….in that existence which is given away to others?” (190)
  • It makes her think about her rights: “Each human being has his share of rights. I suspect it would conduce to the happiness and welfare of all, if each knew his allotment, and held to it as tenaciously as the martyr to his creed.” (190)
    • She wavers: “Queer thoughts these, that surge in my mind: are they right thoughts? I am not certain” (190)
    • She pulls back and reverts to talk about death and religion. She thinks about the “soul’s real hereafter, who shall guess?”
    • And then she gets back to work “industriously” (191) over her sewing
  • The universe responds by showing her her place in society by revealing the identity of her mother and only then giving her place as a wife and mother

Change

• Caroline
  • Purifies self, trial by fire
• Robert
  • Learns to care about his workers
• Shirley
  • Must accept someone’s rule now
• Louis
  • Won’t accept solitude anymore
  • Must learn how to ACT

Love/Imagination/Romance

• “Nothing refines like affection.” (113)
  • The domestic hearth will cure people of being awful folks, apparently. It’s domestic ideology we’ll see more of in Victorian era.
• As a dialectical collision of opposites
  • To taunt Shirley and make her confess her love, Louis taunts her with a story of him getting a wife who will completely follow him
    • “Compulsion is flint and a blow to the meal of some souls,” Shirley returns
    • And he says, “And love the spark it elicits.” (572)
  • For Bronte, the two fiercely independent souls (Louis who chafes against his dependent position as a tutor; Shirley who famously does as she pleases) must clash and fight in order to become ready for each other
    • Louis’ speech about his behavior towards any future wife “alternately irritated and subdued” sounds in this context more like foreplay than actual demands (576): S&M
    • Once he gets mad, he forgets his dependent position (“I have flung off the tutor,” he says 577; and he manages to forget her property and position), so they can meet each other on equal plane
    • “Are we equal at last?” she asks (578) and then they give conventional love talk (not being able to live without each other etc) and she makes him promise he won’t tyrannize (she doesn’t want a tyrant!)
    • It will be a push and pull of power, always going back and forth
      • 584: he knows she is “tameless” at the core
    • In her wish to have this occur, Shirley is like Kant or someone else who sees following the RATIONAL state of things to be true freedom, and for her, the rational choice is finding someone who will help her make good decisions and avoid bad ones b/c she’s too impulsive. Remember, she willingly chooses to have him “master.”
    • True Freedom
• Conquers Independence
  • 562: Love makes her a “bondswoman,” Caroline says
    • Love will conquer all independence
    • For Bronte, independence is key for self-respect, but it won’t automatically give you a fulfilled life
• Finding Your Equal
  • 575: only by finding your equal, will you submit
    • “And you would mate me to a kid?” she protests when Louis talks about local lord, Sir Philip Nunelly
  • Question: Can you really compare people? Can they ever be equal?
    • Bronte: She is way too individualist to be all about equality.
• Making You Better
  • Shirley wants him around b/c he makes her a better person.
    • Bowing down to him is bowing down to a better self.
    • “My husband is not to be my baby… I shall insist on my husband improving me, or else we part.” (575)
• Romance v Industry
  • 181: Robert swears he’s not a romantic during first half of the book
  • 188: Caroline tries to figure out what it would be like to be “a man of business,” “Her earnest wish was to see things as they were and not be romantic”
  • 215: Shirley calls the mill romantic
    • ”’Romantic? With a mill in it?’
      • ‘Romantic with a mill in it. The old mill and white cottage are each admirable in its way.’”
      • And she thinks the counting-house romantic, etc
    • When they ask why she thinks so, she answers, “Because I am a mill-owner, of course.” (Moore’s mill is actually hers; he leases it.)
  • 243: Shirley and Robert have a biz relationship (a loan) but Caroline mistakes it for a romantic relationship
  • 311: Shirley wants Caroline to FORCE herself on Robert
    • Caroline thinks it’s unwomanly, betraying her sex to become forward and make them all ashamed of her
    • Caroline’s attitude is thus a kind of pacifism, an unwillingness to exert force
    • Whereas Shirley literally “seized” Caroline and runs her into Robert after this conversation

Other Themes

• Empiricism
  • Moore’s trip to Birmingham and London to investigate the causes is very much an Engels-style study of industry, a belief in empiricism
  • Of course, people need woman’s softening influence too (Moore’s Caroline)
• Women’s Rights
  • Shirley and Caroline both agitate for their rights
    • Shirley won’t let anyone push her around, even a male family member from affecting her marriage
    • Caroline wants to have Real Work
• Governess/Tutor
  • They are mistreated, just like the operative class
• Illness
  • All four of the main characters have to get ill to change
  • Caroline: Gets consumptive.
    • She proves she can do without love, can live just for the sake of her known position in life (has mom, will live); doesn’t feel so lost
    • Although it doesn’t save the problem for all women
  • Robert: Gets shot
    • Well, he was already changing, but the illness made him stop and rethink things, and it makes him appreciate home/domestic hearth (during unpleasant recovery period)
  • Shirley: Bitten by Possibly Rabid Dog
    • She had to get into some mess so that she’d have to confide in Louis, pave way for their reconciliation
  • Louis: A Very Bad Cold
    • Only for a couple of days and doesn’t seem to change him, but then again, why else would he’ve gotten ill?
• Leisure
  • Lots of mentions of watering places
  • Sketching parties, scenic rambles, trips to the Lakes/Lochs, looking at engraving books, all very picturesque and common for mid-19th c
• Imagination
  • Seen as totally awesome: Shirley has visions, reveries, and so does the narrator (for example, technical explanation of Napoleons’ maneuvers then becomes an indulgent vision of the archangels in the middle of Revelations)
  • The end of the fairies—the last one seen a few years before the action started—despite there being tons before
    • Concomitant with introduction of the mill and the subsequent growth, esp between termination of action and the writing of the book
    • Martin does have a book of fairy tales, so it won’t be extinguished altogether in the mind

Bronte’s Conclusions

• She can’t get anywhere because her love of the unique character blocks all else.
• Prognosis
  • Any solution? The typical Domestic Fixing Industry crap: 504
    • Moore’s Dream: “supposing that whenever her face was under your gaze, or her idea filled your thoughts, you gradually ceased to be hard and anxious, and pure affection, love of home, thirst for sweet discourse, unselfish longing to protect and cherish, replaced the sordid cankering calculations of your trade”
    • 288: Shirley’s “private fund” that she raised—charity, old school outdoor relief, but with a scientific plan b/c of a whole committee coming together—is what apparently saves the workers after the mill attack
      • All she had to do was find Farren a job, give him a few shillings outright, and have Shirley make a subscription. POOF! Problem solved.
    • Bronte has replaced the question of the ability and right of workers to rebel and set their own terms, with the problem of individual human rights and the private negotiation of the person vis a vis the social
      • Like the harsh social world that she knows rejects its problematic members, she casts out the problems too, preferring to think that the change in Moore—which is vague, and we don’t even know if he made those changes, but all we know is difference of polite behavior—is good enough or at least more interesting
      • Like she just lost interest
  • The fact that the narrator has a nice epilogue that talks about how Briarfield has changed during the past thirty-five years almost forecloses the possibility of solving anything
    • The time for change and agitation is supposedly past, gone
    • The new mill has been built, the cottages for workers built, the cinder roads built, everything: progress “won” already just by virtue of timeline
• Seems to trust the arguments of political economy, respecting them and trusting that they are inviolable, but wants to sugar-coat the situation with charity and polite social behavior
• Doesn’t believe in class freedoms, but mostly just for individual freedom
• She believes in the cult of character too much to be a straight republican. Despite her need for freedom, it isn’t one for equality in the same fell swoop. She wants to have the Exceptional, the unique, the original.
  • So don’t think Bronte’s waving the Fr Rev flag
• The book whose first 200 pages are solidly Industrial Novel (conversations are about it) devolves with introduction of Shirley into a novel of manners
  • Bronte can’t really be an industrial novelist because at heart she does not care about class, but instead only about individuals
    • Novel’s cult of character
• Like early Enlightenment, freedom is won first for the individual, which is good for the novel (cult of character cf 444 where “in the name of common law and common sense” we see the true center of the book, the right to rebel against social law)
  • Only later can it be adapted to classes and to material conditions.
    • Remember, at first, and for Hegel, freedom is merely a state of mind.
• Freedom Versus Materialism
  • For Enlightenment, it’s hard to reconcile material determinism and human freedom (just like free will is hard to find in religion; and free choice in ethics) because if you admit that the conditions lead to hardship and immorality, you are denying the human’s freedom to be whatever s/he self-determines to be
  • You can’t admit hist mat yet b/c it sounds like you don’t believe in freedom
    • William Farren says that the bad times are changing him: “I’m getting different to mysel’: I feel I am changing. I wadn’t heed, if t’ bairns and t’ wife had enough to live on.” (159)
    • To accept hist mat is to deny freedom. Can’t face it.
• Personal Resistance Okay, Class Resistance Not.
• Best described as a Romantic, with its need for freedom tempered by the love of the individual and the love of imagination as the true spring of life (not, say, mutton chops nightly and freedom from scrofula)
• Meditation on the sources of defining the human
  • Is it a minimum of intelligence and a good disposition?
    • 342, 436: Caroline seems to think so, though Shirley thinks that’s a poor way to appreciate a person
  • Is it originality?
    • Bronte seems to think authentic humanity is won through it
  • Is it self-possession?
  • Is it the ability to feel?
    • 547: “They drive the nail into the flesh, thinking they are hammering away at an insensate stone.” (thinks Martin Yorke)
  • Is it that you know you do these things?
    • Henry Sympson: “I know I have sense, and I know I have feeling.” (436, very Cartesian)
  • Is it the ability to enjoy? or just actual ownership?
    • Louis, when Shirley notes that her money provides his pleasures, “no caprice can withdraw these pleasure from me; they are mine” (433)
      • His property is a different type than Shirley’s, but it is still conceived as property
    • 459: “Unhumbled, I can take what is mine.” says the hero of Shirley’s early “composition”
  • Can you have it if you’re poor?
    • 505: “no private life is permitted a man in my position, a man in debt,” admits Robert
    • 527

Style

• Says she won’t give sensationalism
  • “Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard.” Except that she does try to give lots of excitement, though truly she avoids sordid melodrama of Barton, for example (39)
• Very disruptive narrator
• Has strategic moments where omniscience doesn’t serve
  • Gives the attack on the mill from women’s point of view only
  • For example, looks to see Jessie Yorke’s death, but says she can’t see the future of Martin, her brother
  • Tends to leave Moore’s mind unplumbed, for example, mostly to keep suspense up (whom does he love?)
• Last Chapter: a dig at realism-haters
  • It’s hard to remember that realism was ever astonishing, but it was threatening
    • Bronte says that telling the truth would end up in public “sweep off in shrieking hysterics, and there would be a wild cry for sal-volatile and burnt feathers.”
    • “Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, denounced as a lie; they disown it, cast it off, throw it on the parish; whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is adopted, petting, termed pretty, proper sweetly natural.” (587)
      • Notice: “thrown upon the parish:” Realism is like the Poor, something that the rich and bourg try to throw off and to forget.
  • When she does give the readers a happy ending (for Sweeting and his fat Dora), she says, “There! I think the varnish has been put on very nicely.” (588)
  • She punishes us for prudery: “(you cannot know how it happened, reader; your curiosity must be robbed to pay your elegant love of the pretty and pleasing)” (588)
  • Question: is she trying a truth claim or being coy and self-referential when she says, “I was happy to find that facts perfectly exonerated me from the attempt” of doing what she wouldn’t want to, which is talk about how Robert’s assassin would’ve been tracked down and hung or transported (589)
    • I wish she were being cute, but the thing is, Robert’s character change makes it necessary that the events were “true”
• The Upshot: We now have to question the relationship among “liberte, egalite, fraternite”
  • Can you have all at once? Not really, Bronte admits.
  • Fraternite hurts your liberte.
    • You aren’t completely free if you’re in love/in relationship. Bronte = don’t be an atom!
  • Liberte ruins egalite.
    • Freedom of Moore means that he’s free to subordinate workers in fact, if not in attitude
  • Fraternite requires no egalite.
    • You have to submit to your position in society, not agitating.
  • Liberte threatens fraternite
    • If you are so insistent on your right, you are alone.