Charlotte Bronte’s Underrated “Shirley”: Allusions to Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” & Anne’s “Agnes Grey”

Everyone loves  Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, her classic novel about an orphan who suffers at a charity school,  then becomes a teacher, then a governess, is engaged to her rich, middle-aged employer, Mr. Rochester – and learns at the altar that he has a mad wife in the attic.

Many readers consider this Gothic novel a romance: in fact, some wish Bronte had written Jane Eyre over and over.  But I prefer Charlotte’s searing last novel, Villette. The narrator, Lucy Snowe, is a brilliant, if unattractive, teacher who falls into unrequited love. Bronte includes many Gothic elements, including a specter in the attic, and a drug trip on laudanum, which was administered to her without her knowledge.

For a long time I forgot about Charlotte’s third novel, Shirley. And so this week I have been rereading it with pleasure. In this stunning industrial novel, Bronte examines the industrial revolution from different points-of-view:  that of a cotton mill owner, Robert Moore, who cannot remain competitive unless he introduces machines into the mill; unemployed workers, some of whom lost their jobs to machines ; and Caroline Helstone, Robert’s cousin, who believes in mediation and kindness.

Romance also plays a part in this industrial novel: in fact, some critics complain about a “lack of unity.” To me, Bronte’s smooth writing unites the industrial theme with the romance seamlessly. Caroline is in love with Robert, who is ambivalent about his feelings for her; and when Shirley, a feminist heiress who often refers to herself as “a gentleman,” because women have fewer opportunities than men, arrives in the neighborhood, Robert calculates that it might be wiser to marry an heiress for her money.

One of the cleverest aspects of the book is Charlotte’s subtle allusions to her sisters’ novels.  She began to write Shirley in the late 1840s, and completed it in 1849 after the deaths of her siblings, Emily, Anne, and Branwell.  No wonder she pays homage to Emily’s Wuthering Heights and to Anne’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Perhaps she alludes to Branwell, as well. She and Branwell obsessively wrote their Angria stories together.

Charlotte’s style is milder than Emily’s, but she seems in Shirley to rewrite a few of Emily’s scenes from a different angle. For instance, there are vicious dog scenes in both Wuthering Heights and Shirley. In Chapter XV of Shirley, “Mr. Donne’s Exodus,” Shirley’s dog, Tartar, barking and growling,  chases  two terrified curates up the stairs.  This  recalls a more savage scene in Chapter 1 of Wuthering Heights, in which Mr. Lockwood, Heathcliff’s tenant, pays a visit to his landlord, only to find himself left alone in a a room with six savage dogs. 

Emily’s scenes are intensely savage, but there is also humor. Mr. Lockwood narrates:

Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still – but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury, and leapt on my knees.  I flung her back, and hastened to interpose the table between us.  This proceeding activated the whole hive.  Half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes, and ages, issued from hidden dens to the common center….

Charlotte’s take on the dog scene is very different: it is wholly comical. Two impolite, unpopular currates, Malone and Doone, arrive at Shirley’s house and rush up the stairs, chased by her black-muzzled, tawny dog, Tartar. Shirley and Caroline know that his “growl, more terrible than the bark – menacing as thunder…” never lasts long. And so Caroline and her friend Shirley laugh quietly, but are gracious when they save the curates, until more comedy ensues.

Here is a paragraph from the scene of Tartar with the curates.

…a gentleman was fleeing up the oak staircase, making for refuge in the gallery or chambers in hot haste:  another was backing fast to the stair-foot, wildly flourishing a knotty stick, at the same time reiterating, “Down! Down! Down!” while the tawny dog bayed, bellowed, howled at him, and a group of servants came bundling from the kitchen.  The dog made a spring; the second gentleman turned tail and rushed after his comrade; the first was already safe in a bedroom: he held the door against his fellow – nothing so merciless as terror; – but the other fugitive struggled hard:  the door was about to yield to his strength.

In another scene in Shirley, Caroline Helstone, like Catherine Linton, née Earnshaw, in Wuthering Heights, is ill with a fever, and on the verge of death.  She calls out deliriously that she must see Robert Moore one more time before she dies.

“Oh, I should like to see him once more before all is over:  Heaven might favour me thus far!” she cried.  “God grant me a little comfort before I die!” was her humble petition.

There is nothing humble in Volume II, Chapter 1, of Wuthering Heights in Catherine’s brief clandestine reunion with her first love and soulmate,  Heathcliff. On her deathbed, she says that Heathcliff has killed her, and thrived on it.

“I wish I could hold you,” she continued, briefly, “till we were both dead!  I shouldn’t care what you suffered.  I care nothing for your sufferings.  Why shouldn’t you suffer?  I do!  W ill you forget me – will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw.  I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past – my children are dearer than she was, and, at death, I will not rejoice that I was going to her, I shall be sorry to lose them?’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”

Passion kills Catherine in Wuthering Heights, but Caroline Helstone recovers, due to the bonding of women, one in particular. There is no female bonding in Wuthering Heights. Emily’s women rarely interact with one another.

Charlotte also alludes to Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey: Shirley’s governess is named Agnes – though Agnes Pryor is a middle-aged Agnes Grey. As a young woman, Agnes Pryor suffered like Agnes Grey as she tried to govern her charges; and she was desperately lonely, living in isolation from the adults of the family.

Now Agnes Pryor is a widow with a secret: we learn some of the nightmarish details of her marriage,though she is too discreet to reveal much. But they are not unlike the sufferings of Helen Graham in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and alcohol is implied, if not specifically mentioned.

Of course Anne wrote a happy ending to Agnes Grey. Grey married a gentle clergyman, and presumably lived with him happily ever. We want her to be happy, but was the curate always kind? Did something Gothic happen? People change. They have secrets, like Mr. Rochester. We hope Agnes Grey found bliss. We are not entirely sanguine. But that’s because I’ve also been reading Austen’s Northanger Abbey, in which Catherine Morland adores Gothic novels and puts a Gothic spin on everything!

Jane Austen vs. the Brontes:  Does Anyone Still Read “Shirley”? 

 Jane Austen is the most popular writer in the world. We base this on intuition, not stats: the Janeites are rather like Star Trek fans. They go to conventions and dress up in costumes. They go to balls. One hundred Janeites think nothing of squeezing into folding chairs in a smallish room to participate in a discussion of Pride and Prejudice. Alas, in such a crowd, only the loudest and fastest prevail. “Next time I’ll try pantomime,” one woman commented.

Janeites are also glued to the British film adaptations of Austen’s books: a TV series of Sanditon, one of her unfinished novels, was spun out to last three seasons. And of course they read and reread the books (as do I). Some read nothing but Jane. And they love Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club. And they love the film of The Jane Austen Book Club.

I adore Austen, but I prefer the Brontes. And I have noted that Bronte fans differ from Janeites in that they tend to be one-book fans: they may love Charlotte’s  Jane Eyre, but are lukewarm about Emily’s lyrical Gothic, Wuthering Heights, or vice versa.   Charlotte’s Villette, my own favorite, is often dismissed as too bleak, and though Anne Bronte is rising in popularity, her masterpiece, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, does not compare to her sisters’ work. Many will disagree!

But perhaps the greatest difference is the publishers’ approach to the two authors. Take the Penguin Clothbound Classics:  the Austen collection has seven volumes: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Love and Friendship.  The Penguin Clothbound Classics Bronte collection is less inclusive. It has only four novels out of the seven:  Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 

Penguin Clothbound Classics Bronte Collection

I wonder:  Where is Agnes Grey, my favorite of Anne’s?   And what about Charlotte’s  ShirleyShirley, which Charlotte finished after the deaths of her brother and two sisters, while still mourning, may be uneven, but it is a solid 19th-century factory novel. Charlotte worried because one of Elizabeth Gaskell’s factory novels, Mary Barton, was published before Shirley. She thought that it might affect sales and reviews.

Shirley begins as an industrial novel, set in Yorkshire, centered on the clash between workers and manufacturers in 1811.  But it is also a romance, and a study of women’s depression.  The heroine, Caroline Helstone, is raised by her uncle, a bossy, opinionated clergyman.  She falls in love with her Belgian cousin, Robert Moore, a mill owner, and it is the highlight of her day when, during her French lessons with her cousin Hortense, Robert appears.  For very inadequate reasons, her  uncle forbids her to visit the Helstones, and lonely Caroline becomes depressed and anorexic.  Then Shirley, an energetic heiress, arrives in the neighborhood, and becomes Caroline’s best friend.  The two are present when the mill workers strike:  the men become violent when Robert Moore awaits a delivery of new machines, they fear (rightly) that some will be replaced.  And if you like Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and Mary Barton, you will enjoy Shirley

If you want a complete hardcover set, I recommend the Everyman’s Library editions. They are not sold as a set, but they make a set.  Three volumes are devoted to Charlotte: one to Jane Eyre, another to Villette, and another to Shirley and The Professor;  one to Emily’s Wuthering Heights; and one to Anne Bronte’s two novels. These attractive books, have enjoyable, smart introductions by critics and novelist, but in general they are less scholarly than the  Penguins.

You can also make your own set with Penguin and Oxford World Classics paperbacks.  If you’re a Bronte girl, there are plenty of copies – even of Shirley.  There is also a boxed complete Wordsworth paperback Bronte set, which one blogger raved about. I am not a fan of the Wordsworth covers, but there is nothing wrong with the books.

Do you have favorite editions of Austen or the Brontes?

“Shirley” by Charlotte Bronte: Romance and the Industrial Revolution

Writers’ museums are enjoyable, yet boring. I considered traveling from London to Haworth, The Bronte Parsonage Museum, but it seemed too complicated, and would probably be  too touristy anyway.  Even the Dickens Museum is too touristy.  There are do’s and don’ts:  don’t linger in Dickens’ dining room, because you will not want to see plate settings labeled John Forster and Thackeray.  It is also, if I remember correctly, a  talking dining room, with a loop of The Pickwick Papers set on “forever.”  Do go upstairs and look at Dickens’s desk, specially designed for his readings.  I love the upper floors of the Dickens museum
 

I fear that Haworth’s dining room might recite Jane Eyre.  In fact, the only writers’ museums I can honestly recommend are in Nebraska:  Willa Cather’s in Red Cloud and Bess Streeter Aldrich’s in Elmwood.

The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire


Charlotte Bronte is, of course,  best known for Jane Eyre and Villette, both masterpieces, while her novel, Shirley, which she finished in 1849, after the deaths of her siblings Branwell, Emily and Anne, is unfairly overlooked. 

Shirley is an entertaining, well-written, serious book, if wildly uneven.  One gets the feeling that the mourning Charlotte lost her sense of form when she went back to writing Shirley.  It begins as an industrial novel, set in Yorkshire, centered on the clash between workers and manufacturers in 1811.  But soon it turns into a romance, and a fascinating study of women’s depression.

Bronte begins by introducing us to a a comic trio of  curates.

Of late years, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good.  

And then we meet Mr. Helstone, a well-respected, crusty clergyman, who interrupts the curates’ party, and commands Malone, his Irish curate, to accompany him to Robert Moore’s mill.  Moore expects trouble: he has ordered new machinery to be delivered. And many of his out-of-work employees, whom he has fired because of a trade embargo during the Napoleonic Wars, are militant.  And indeed there is violence:  the wagons are stopped and the machinery broken.

I am fond of Victorian novels about industrial change:  I love Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, a masterpiece, and Mary Barton.  In fact, Charlotte was worried when Mary Barton was published before Shirley, in case it affected sales and reviews.

But never mind:  Shirley is not entirely an industrial novel.   Bronte abruptly changes tack  and focuses on the heroine, Caroline Helstone, an intelligent young woman who has been brought up by her unaffectionate uncle, Mr. Helstone.  He wrecks Caroline’s happiness when he forbids her to spend time with  Hortense Moore, Robert Moore’s sister, who is teaching her French, mathematics, and English literature.  The Moores are Caroline’s Belgian cousins. Mr. Helstone fears that Robert may want to marry Caroline, for the little money she has.  (Mr. Helstone miscalculates:  there is not enough money for cold, calculating -yet supposedly lovable- Robert.)

Caroline in solitude changes overnight from a charming, lively woman into a depressed, mousy, miserable girl.  Caroline is completely alone, so she follows a schedule, studying, doing good works, and exercising every day.  She tells her uncle she would like to go away find a position as a governess.  He is angry, because of class reasons:  Caroline will never have to work, he says, and he will not allow it.  


But what is Caroline to do in the village?


We do not meet the heiress, Shirley Keeldar, until page 203 (the Everyman’s Libray edition).  And so I cannot seriously regard Shirley as the heroine and think the title is a misnomer. The heroine is Caroline, and that should be the title.

But Shirley’s move to Fieldhead saves Caroline from despair. The two become best friends, yet Caroline still longs to go away and work.  And, because she pines for Robert (and has no work) she becomes very ill and falls into a terrible depression. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this odd book.  Yes, it rambles, but Charlotte Bronte is brilliant, witty, and is one of the best – perhaps the best – writers of the 19th century. 

I don’t know the history or politics, but Bronte takes the side of the mill owners, because they cannot compete internationally unless they mechanize; yet she is fair to the unemployed mill workers and their starving families on a personal level. 

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