Shirley (Penguin Popular Classics)

Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley. London, Penguin Books, 1994. 11 x 18cm. (6), 666 pages. Original softcover. Excellent condition, as new. [Penguin Popular Classics]. As many critics have noted, Shirley has a number of different plot strands, loosely drawn together. It can be read as a romantic tale, as sociological comment on the question of womens' lives or as a history of the Luddite riots in the cloth-making district of Yorkshire. Contemporary critics found Shirley (1849) inferior to Jane Eyre. However, recent criticism has discovered in Shirley a significant condition-of-England theme as well as a clearly feminist discourse. Patricia Ingham, for instance, considers Shirley an industrial novel that successfully tackles both gender and class issues during the Industrial Revolution in England. Shirley was published at the end of the "Hungry Forties," a decade of profound social unrest. The novel has a complex plot: an unromantic tale with two interpolated social commentaries: on the history of the Luddite riots in the cloth-making district of Yorkshire, and on the struggle for female independence from male dominance in patriarchal society. [From Victorian Web]