And then three-quarters of the way through the book we find out that she too is pining for a man. She’s rich and independent and apparently highly motivated to be a good landowner, but then she’ll stop for pages and pages, falling into a trance and thinking about Adam and Eve, or just Eve. I’m not sure what Shirley’s point was supposed to be, as a character (readers, I warned you about my literary-analysis ignorance). I couldn’t help but think that Caroline would have had fewer emotional and physical crises if Robert had just had a bit more economic success from the outset and been able to act on his love for her. The romantic parts undercut the gender parts for me, because as miserable as Caroline is, and as independent and strong-willed as Shirley is, their emotions, thoughts, and actions are shaped so thoroughly by their love for specific men. This feels like a book written by a very angry woman, but an angry woman who in the end is writing two romantic storylines with HEAs. No one speaks this way! No one ever spoke this way! Certainly not barely-educated Yorkshire maidens.

And even worse, sometimes they emerged through dialogue. But then Blake/Wordsworth would be elbowed aside by Mary Wollstonecraft, which was better but still unbelievably didactic. I am not a fan of William Blake (or Wordsworth). I thought I was getting a book on riots and social change and suddenly William Blake (or is it William Wordsworth?) showed up. And then there are the many, many didactic passages (entire chapters, even) by the omniscient narrator, on everything from gender to nature to politics to religion (established, pagan, you name it). There are the relationships between young women, young and old women, and women and men. There is the nominal plot, about the mill and the changing economic conditions of the region. Or not bloat, maybe, but there are at least three books in this book. I really did need all those hours driving alone to stick to Shirley, because my goodness there is a lot of bloat in this thing.

I approached it as a lover of 19thC literature but not a lover of Brontë. Liz McC and Miss Bates have both written about their experiences reading Shirley, and both are far more competent than I to talk about it as a novel. After several previous starts and stops (from last year!) I finally managed to crack the back of this novel. At 26 hours, I think this is officially the longest audiobook I’ve completed. There is nothing like a 2100-mile road trip to give you the opportunity to listen to a really long book. Sunita B Reviews classic fiction / Historical fiction / Regency England / Victorian literature 8 Comments

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë