Shirley, you don't mean that: A Review

A new year means a new trek through England, and I began my journey on the wild Yorkshire Moors. In British Literature, the Brontë sisters and the Moors are so frequently paired together that it is difficult to imagine one without the other. The two Brontë staples -- Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights -- paint a vivid, Gothic, and even romantic picture of this wasteland. But Jane and Cathy aren't the only Brontë heroines, and I decided that it was time to explore two lesser-known characters in an underrated and relatively unknown novel: Shirley.

The synopsis is fairly simple: wealthy heiress Shirley Keeldar takes up residence in her family home and quickly becomes friends with the rector's niece, Caroline Helstone. These two girls are passionately in love, unbeknownst to them and the rest of the world, with brothers. Shirley is in love with the elder brother, Louis Moore, who was her tutor. Caroline is in love with the younger brother, Robert Moore, the owner of a textile mill. When Shirley arrives, everyone assumes that she will marry Robert -- or one of the other countless suitors -- but she remains single. Both women struggle with loving men who cannot love them in return: Robert cannot love Caroline because he is financially unable to marry (except for money) because of trade restrictions hampering his business, and Louis cannot love Shirley because they are not equals in terms of their fortunes. It became obvious to me early on that both heroines would receive their happy endings, but the journey they took to get there and the depth of this novel is where its true beauty lies.

In a nutshell, Shirley is the story of two women trying to find a way to be with the men they love in the midst of war, class struggles, and family drama. Sounds almost like a Jane Austen novel, doesn't it? In a way, this novel and Austen's novels have a good deal in common. Shirley is Charlotte Brontë's only historical novel; it takes place in 1811, the same year that Sense and Sensibility was published. But once you get past the time period, sensible heroines, and witty characters, the differences become evident. One of the most interesting things about classics which are historical novels is that you get a feel for how that era was viewed during the author's life. In this case, we see how a Yorkshire woman writing in 1849 viewed the Napoleonic Wars and the industrial movement of the early 19th Century.

The good life: reading, drinking bourbon, and watching my husband work on the bike.

To me, the most breathtaking part of this novel is the history. Shirley takes place in a period of growing industrialization stunted by the war with Napoleon, and the subsequent riots within the working class: the Luddite movement. As the novel begins, Robert Moore struggles to keep his textile mill afloat. He seeks to combat this industrial depression by bringing in new machinery that will cut costs, allowing his mill to work more efficiently. The workers, many of whom are dismissed, strike back at Moore, and this struggle between employer and employees set the stage for the rest of the novel. While the Luddite movement was an integral part of domestic politics during the 1810's, it is easy to see where Charlotte is getting her inspiration. One of the quintessential characteristics of the early Victorian Era (and really, the 19th century throughout the Western world) is the struggles and consequential rise of the working class. The year before this novel was published, The Communist Manifesto sparked a revolution with its epicenter in Germany, rippling throughout the entire world. At the same time, Charles Dickens had been discussing the trials of the lower classes beginning in the 1830s until his death in 1870, and Elizabeth Gaskell, who is perhaps the most famous female British author devoted to exposing the working classes struggles, published her first novel just a year before Charlotte published Shirley. So Charlotte Brontë certainly had plenty of inspiration for a historical novel illuminating working class struggles.

Other characteristics of the novel also illuminate important influences on her life. The clergy play a huge role in the direction of the novel, particularly in the form of Caroline's controlling uncle/guardian. Charlotte delves into complex theological matters (a little too deep at times -- it's almost as overwhelming as Tolstoy with his 19th century Russian farming techniques) concerning both the Anglican church and the dissenters, which suggests that her clergyman father discussed theology with his daughters. She generally portrays the clergy favorably but, similar to Austen and her various fictional clergymen, still discusses their foibles at length. But probably the greatest inspiration developed during arguably two of the hardest years in Charlotte's life: 1848 and 1849. Charlotte was the middle of six children. Two sisters died as children, and the other three, Emily, Anne, and the only boy, Branwell, died between September of 1848 and May of 1849. With this knowledge, the characters of Shirley and Caroline are even more appealing to the reader as they are a direct reflection of the grief Charlotte felt. The character of Shirley is based on Emily, and when Caroline becomes so ill that she nearly dies, Charlotte writes the blissful, romantic ending that her sisters would never have.

Charlotte's passion and dedication for the working class and the clergy are immediately evident to the reader, but the real gems are the characters. The heroines are two vastly different women with different needs and desires, and yet they are in virtually the same situation. Shirley's fierceness and philanthropy are reminiscent of Emma Woodhouse and Bathsheba Everdene. She is wealthy, and uses that wealth for good, but she needs a guiding force in her life -- just like these two women received in George Knightley and Gabriel Oak. Caroline, on the other hand, is timid and shy, yet loyal and persistent when it comes to the man that she loves, much like Fanny Price and Amy Dorritt. Nothing would deter these women from loving Edmund Bertram and Arthur Clennam, no matter their vices or foolish mistakes, and Caroline was no different. No matter how cruelly Robert Moore treated her, she knew her own heart and would not be persuaded otherwise. And yet, despite Caroline's sweetness and Shirley's wealth, they cannot achieve happiness on their own.

But despite Shirley's fierceness and Caroline's loyalty, these two heroines offer a striking contrast with Jane Eyre. Over the years, the Brontë sisters have become an icon for feminists. Jane Eyre certainly fits the feminist agenda as she declares: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you." (Jane Eyre, Chapter 23) But the characters of Shirley and Caroline are the complete opposite. In fact, the last two chapters of this book discuss how these women are eternally tethered and domesticated to the men that they love -- whether their love is returned or not. Louis Moore is the "keeper" of Shirley, the one who tames her wildness. She says to him:

"Mr. Moore," said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest countenance, "teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property, but I ask you to share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your judgment is well balanced, your heart is kind, your principles are sound. I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always!" (Shirley, Chapter 36)

In the following chapter, Shirley is seen submitting to her husband completely:

He was virtually master of Fieldhead weeks before he became so nominally—the least presumptuous, the kindest master that ever was, but with his lady absolute. She abdicated without a word or a struggle. "Go to Mr. Moore, ask Mr. Moore," was her answer when applied to for orders... In all this Miss Keeldar partly yielded to her disposition; but a remark she made a year afterwards proved that she partly also acted on system. "Louis," she said, "would never have learned to rule if she had not ceased to govern. The incapacity of the sovereign had developed the powers of the premier." (Shirley, Chapter 37)

What a blow to modern feminism! Surely, she can't mean that she "abdicated without a word or a struggle." In a world that condemns a woman sharing her wealth and power to her husband is scoffed, feminist icon Charlotte Brontë's heroine submits everything to her husband. Caroline is different in that she is poor with nothing to give, but she still submits everything to Robert. But I don't think this was Charlotte's point. These two women would not submit to just any man. Shirley will not submit to her tyrannical uncle's demand that she marries one of the wealthy suitors, but she does submit to the man who loves her ardently, tenderly, and wholly. She submits to the man who is worthy of her. Caroline submits to her uncle because he is her guardian, but she would become a governess before marrying and submitting to a man who was not her equal.

My adorable, late-night reading buddies.

Shirley does have a few flaws which are more a flaw of the time and modern literary expectations than a flaw of the novel. For one, Charlotte Brontë loved switching for entire pages into French. Since Robert, Louis, and Hortense Moore were all half-Flemish, they frequently switch between French and English in their dialogue. In 19th Century England, this would not have been a problem as French was commonly taught to the gentry. It was difficult to follow when it would switch back and forth between the two languages without giving a translation.

The other flaw is that the climax is so drawn out that it feels like something was missing at the end. It was a very difficult book to get into for the first half, but the second half flew by because it was filled with excitement. The climax spans almost 100 pages of the novel (out of 300) where you feel it must get resolved soon but the characters simply will not communicate their emotions. I think this is less of a flaw of the novel and more of modern expectations for a spectacular ending with explosions and passionate declarations of love. Technically this novel had plenty of both of those things, but I suppose it was a simpler ending than I expected from such a complex novel.

But that's how this different, and why it is such a splendid work of art. The story flows better than many of its contemporary novels. Charlotte paints a realistic picture instead of trying to make it overly romantic. It isn't Gothic like Wuthering Heights, or dreary like Dickens, or pastoral like Hardy -- but it does incorporate many of these elements into the story to give you a realistic picture. And it is truly a beautiful picture filled with love and loss and longing. Charlotte was able to weave a story that kept the magic of the Moors while adding a painfully realistic romance and a historically accurate fictionalization of the early labor movement. There are so many more details in this novel which I did not discuss, but all of them add volume and character to this already brilliant novel. Why this novel was not more popular, I will never know. But what I do know is that it rekindled my love of the Brontë sisters' works.

And feminists, next time you claim an authoress as your poster child, make sure she doesn't have any skeletons in her closet -- like Shirley.

NaNoWriMo 2016

November was an interesting month for me. My parents visited for a week and we painted the main living area, which has made the house look much warmer. A family of nine stayed for a weekend which was simultaneously exhausting and refreshing because I got to play with my favorite children. My husband was home and not working for a total of four days. And then, like every November, there was NaNoWriMo.

This is the third year in a row that I've participated and probably the most successful year of all. There were four days where I was unable to write at all and six more that I wrote under 1,000 words. That means that there were twenty days which I was able to devote my entire attention to writing 50,000 words. And I still managed to reach the goal. Oh and my computer died in the middle of the month. I almost lost half a chapter because it froze suddenly and never worked right again. That was fun.

That might not sound very impressive but for me, writing 2,500 words a day is difficult. I have to force myself to focus (aka. get off Facebook and ignore my longing to play Civilization V) in order to reach my goal and most days I did just that. I record how many words I've written each day because I love looking at statistics. My lowest days were always the one that I was unable to devote a good chunk of my day toward writing. November 26th was my lowest day (I went shopping and to a concert; it's amazing I wrote at all) with 683 words. My highest day, ironically, was the following day, November 27th, with 4,397 words. I think I was overcompensating for not reaching my goal the previous day but in reality it was one really long chapter. My total was 53,300 words. I wish I had planned it to come out so evenly but that was unintentional.

Starting NaNoWriMo right with coffee and essential oils to encourage creativity.

The synopsis for this novel is unlike most historical fiction, in my opinion. Most historical fiction novels (particularly those set in the Regency Era) detail a single woman's quest for a husband, but what happens after the wealthy son of a baronet proposes and they live happily ever after? Marriage isn't always the Instagram-worthy picture of perfection, like a lot of fiction makes it look like. If you think Mr. Darcy and Lizzy or Mr. Rochester and Jane never argued (you know, if they weren't fictional characters) then your view of marriage is unrealistic. So my goal was to paint a realistic picture of marriage -- one where all a person's flaws are laid out on the table and where the couple must sort through their issues together.

Cecilia Blackwell thought that she married Mr. Henry Blackwell, Member of Parliament for Lancashire, out of love but her first month of marriage proves that Mr. Blackwell's last priority is his wife. When she is left alone for months at a time, she consoles herself with reading political treatise and riding her horse across the desolate, lonely Lancashire Moors. She meets Mr. Douglas Middleton, the younger son of a baronet, and he instantly falls in love with Cecilia despite his knowledge of her marriage. She pushes him away multiple times until she realizes that, in her husband's absence, he is her only friend. Cecilia struggles with infidelity but refuses to give in to that temptation. Mr. Blackwell's best friend, Lord Greystone, invites her to visit and at a party the two Parliamentarians discover that Cecilia is not only educated on politics but she is also shrewd and persuasive. Eager to use her abilities for the Whig cause, Cecilia visits London while Parliament is in session. She and Mr. Blackwell quarrel multiple times over her education and it causes a great rift between them. They both must humble themselves or they risk estrangement and potential scandal that could be detrimental to Mr. Blackwell's career.

Normally I write Regency stories that aren't dated except for general references to major events or people, like Napoleon who terrorized a bulk of the era. I quickly realized that this wouldn't be possible for this novel. Since Mr. Blackwell is a Member of Parliament and Cecilia's vast political knowledge is a crucial part of the plot, it is difficult to be vague. I placed the novel post-Napoleon because everyone knows so much about the Napoleonic Wars but not so much about the struggles of post-war England. Haphazardly I chose for it to begin in 1818 and I didn't realize how much was going on politically during that time. Poor crop yields in 1817 caused a recession. This was aggravated by the Corn Laws, a tariff on incoming grains meant to prop up British grain production and sales. This was a Tory scheme proposed by Thomas Malthus. The Whigs and David Ricardo violently opposed this, particularly in light of the famine, and pushed for free trade. (The Corn Laws were not revoked until 1846.) There was an election in June-July of 1818 in which the Whigs gained a few seats but the Tories retained overwhelming power. (The Tories had a firm grasp on the House of Commons from 1783-1834 with only three Whig Prime Ministers for a total of five years. In 1834 the Tory party broke down and transformed into the Conservative party; the Whig party followed suite in 1859 becoming the Liberal party. Can you imagine a single party retaining power for fifty years?)

Also during this time there were debates about civil liberties and Parliamentary reform but little progress was made since those were Whig-backed projects. The result of the Tories ignoring the wants of the populace was the Peterloo Massacre in which the British Army attacked 60,000 protesters in Manchester demanding Parliamentary reform and representation for growing industrial areas. (Manchester and Lancaster had growing populations and only two Members representing them in Parliament while some declining rural areas had multiple Members representing them.) The result of this tragedy was an even greater tragedy: the Six Acts. This piece of legislation significantly limited civil liberties by outlawing large gatherings of people, increasing the punishment for political dissenters, and gave magistrates the power to search private homes and seize arms. (Some of the legislation was not revoked until as late as 2008. Manchester didn't gain representation until the Great Reform Act of 1832.) Of course, the Whigs fought this vehemently but made little progress.

In another ironic twist, I located this novel in Lancashire because I wanted the barrenness of the Moors and Cecilia's marriage to mirror each other. Imagine my surprise when I discovered in my research that during this time both Lancaster and Manchester were located in Lancashire county. (English borders have shifted over the years in relation to population and representation. It's very confusing.) The significance of the Peterloo Massacre means so much more when this occurs in Mr. Blackwell's own region. The story will end late in 1819 but I toyed with the idea of continuing it into 1820 so that I could address the Cato Street Conspiracy, an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister, the Earl of Liverpool. But I've decided that the defeat of the Whigs over the Six Acts serves my purposes perfectly.

If I didn't make this clear already, researching is one of my favorite parts of writing and my love of political and economic history really shines through in this novel. In a way, Cecilia and I are alike in our interest in economics but she was unfortunate in being born in a time where such subjects were unsuitable for a lady. (She is a big fan of David Ricardo, who was a Member of Parliament during this time, and I am planning on reading Ricardo before the end of the year, even though I'm not a huge fan of his theories.)

But politics isn't the only thing I learned about on this journey. I had to research pregnancy and childbirth because Cecilia's sister had a child later in the novel. I always thought that the "confinement" period was for a few months before giving birth, but in fact it last 4-6 weeks after the birth. The Regency period was actually one of the least restrictive eras for women and childbirth. In the Medieval period, women were oftentimes confined to their bed with all the windows shut for several months, while in the Victorian period, childbearing was considered vulgar and the moment a woman began to show signs of her pregnancy, she would remain out of society. Regency women were active until giving birth but rested afterwards. The link I found for this information can be found here.

The other interesting thing that I researched was the education process. I was trying to discover how old a man would be when he went to university, and I ended up learning even more about higher education. I always thought that the scene in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice where they show Darcy and Wickham at university together was ridiculous. Why in the world had they put Colin Firth in that horrible cap and gown? It turns out that the ridiculous cap and gown was historically accurate. Those attending university dressed according to their level of wealth. Indeed, a man of Darcy's wealth but without a title would wear a black gown with a golden tassel. The link to that information can be found here.

I realize that I'm making it sound like I did more research than writing, but it comes with the territory. One of the things that I appreciate the most in historical fiction is when everything is as accurate as possible, and one of the reasons why I despise some historical movies is because they ignore historical accuracy. It is possible to be historically accurate and create an interesting book or film.

Delenn "helps" me write. Actually she just sits on me in ways that I can't type.

Much to my disappointment, I did not finish this novel. I started NaNoWriMo with around 5,000 words and now I'm just shy of 60,000. My goal is to finish it by the end of December. I am estimating that I have at least ten chapters left. Given that I've written thirty in the last month, I think ten will be attainable. And I came up with a title which, for some reason, always seems to be the hardest part for me.

Writing a novel isn't just recording a story on paper. It's more than just creative expression. In a way, it teaches you something about yourself. It makes you realize just how talented you are, and in return it makes you thankful for those God-given talents. It's incredibly satisfying to know that you've accomplished something, even if it's not well written and only friends and family ever have a chance to enjoy that creation. I'm incredibly proud of this accomplishment and I encourage anyone who has ever had that creative spark to record your tale. You'll be amazed at how much you see yourself grow as you release your creativity and construct a story that is completely unique to you.

Goodbye until next November, NaNoWriMo.