STRUCTURALLY SAPPHIC:
Charlotte Brontë's Shirley

Charlotte Brontė wrote Shirley in the immediate aftermath of the tremendous success of Jane Eyre, and perhaps its success gave her a freer rein to express her passionate convictions. Shirley is Brontė's 'condition of England' novel, but structurally it falls into two parts: while the first half is an examination of the humanitarian consequences of technological advances, in the second half a love story emerges and social preoccupations dwindle away.

Events in Brontė's life may have contributed to the novel's odd structure. During its writing, her brother Branwell died and this blow was soon followed by the deaths of her sisters, Emily and Anne. It is said that Shirley's character, which only appears after two hundred pages, is loosely based on Emily Brontė, and that the novel's other heroine, Caroline Helstone, resembles Anne Brontė. The friendship between the two characters is in many ways the central relationship of the novel. At a structural level, it both shadows and tacitly undermines the cross-gender relationships portrayed in the text, to the extent that it might be said that the novel's real love affair is between Caroline and Shirley.

When we are first shown the plight of Caroline, who is intelligent, lonely and underemployed, we are also shown the fates of other characters who are living examples of what her future might hold. Caroline is unable to work, even though she wants to, and any other prospects seem like a living death. For example, the poverty-stricken old maids Misses Mann and Ainley, whilst admirable, are not to be envied, and even if a husband can be obtained, the marriages portrayed such as those of Caroline's uncle, the Rector, Caroline's parents, and another local family, the Yorkes, are not seen as happy for the women. With little distraction from her romantic preoccupations concerning the mill owner Robert Moore, it is not surprising that Caroline is so miserable that she falls ill, and literal rather than figurative death becomes another possible outcome.

Charlotte Brontė suggests that "Men and women never struggle so hard as when they struggle alone, without witness, counsellor, or confidant; unencouraged, unadvised, and unpitied". However, Caroline suffers this condition for 11 chapters and 200 pages before we are introduced to the eponymous heroine Shirley Keeldar, who rescues her from loneliness and is also the agent by which Caroline is reunited with her mother. By the time Shirley appears we have formed a solid perception of Caroline as an unchallenging heroine who is predictably romantic and who engages our sympathy. We already have Caroline, so why do we need another heroine? In one sense Caroline is incomplete without her alter ego Shirley, who serves as a projection of the desire for self-assertion repressed in every woman like Caroline of the Victorian era. Brontė could therefore keep conservative readers happy with Caroline, at the same time as challenging their perceptions with Shirley.

Shirley has managed to escape from Caroline's death-like fate. She is a strong-willed woman in the mould of Jane Austen's heiress, Emma Woodhouse. Shirley was at the time of the novel a man's name, and although she is not masculine in appearance, Shirley does appear to represent the masculine principle. She is active, where Caroline is passive, and happy where Caroline is unhappy. She has an occupation, in managing her house and estate at Fieldhead in Yorkshire. She is a partner in the local mill, and organises and contributes to a charitable fund to try to relieve the effects of the mill's dwindling business. Other characters acknowledge her status as an honorary man. She tells the Rector, "You want me as a gentleman - the first gentleman in Briarfield, to supply your place, be master of the Rectory, and guardian of your niece"; and he replies, "'Exactly, captain: I thought the post would suit you'". In a conventional novel perhaps Shirley really would have been a man, the rich young heir who arrives to take possession of his inheritance and distinguish one of the local young women with his attentions. Accordingly, when Shirley arrives, she immediately takes up with Caroline, rescues her from her loneliness, guides and protects her.

As the friendship of Shirley and Caroline develops, it continues to shadow the processes of a romantic relationship. The friendship is sincere, intimate and exclusive. For example, when they plan their day together at Nunwood Forest, Shirley asks: "'You would be dull with me alone?'" and Caroline replies, "'I should not. I think we should suit: and what third person is there whose presence would not spoil our pleasure?'". Since Emily and Anne Brontė may have inspired Shirley and Caroline, the relationship between the two characters is usually regarded as sisterly rather than erotic. Nevertheless, during their most intimate moments in the natural surroundings of Nunwood forest, their conversation about the stormy rhythms of nature depicts them as passionate women, and the cataclysmic imagery conveys a sustained but sublimated sexual charge, as when Caroline says: "'I have seen such storms in hilly districts in Yorkshire; and at their riotous climax, while the sky was all cataract, the earth all flood, I have remembered the Deluge.'"

The bond between the two women includes further romantic elements such as separations and silences, misunderstandings, and concealed feelings. For example, they do not see each other for some time when Caroline is ill, or when Shirley is preoccupied with business matters or her family. Feelings are misinterpreted when Caroline believes that Shirley is in love with Robert Moore, and Shirley withholds the information about her own feelings for Robert Moore's brother, her tutor Louis. But all ends in perfect understanding as they reveal their true feelings, even though they are not for each other, and Shirley and Caroline are in a sense united at the altar when they marry Louis and Robert Moore on the same day.

Brontė takes care that, although the women do marry, at their moments of crisis they, and particularly the somewhat passive Caroline, are not rescued from their fate by men, but by women. Shirley rescues Caroline from loneliness, and on the point of death Caroline is saved by her mother Mrs Pryor, while Mrs Pryor also offers Caroline the possibility of a future home. Charlotte Brontė seems to have been very aware of these reversals of the traditional gender roles, and she reinforces them with additional episodes. For example, the myth read by Louis about the union of humanity and genius represents an alternative creation theory in which the woman, Eva, whose name echoes Eve, is predominant. Later on, Louis compares his relationship with Shirley to the myth of Cadmus, but reversed so that the feminine Juno is the powerful figure, rather than Zeus. Indeed, since he is a tutor, Louis' relationship with Shirley is also a reversal of the social and economic relationship portrayed by Charlotte Brontė in Jane Eyre, when Jane was the governess and Rochester the master.

The eventual marriages of Caroline and Shirley to Robert and Louis do not appear to lie easily with the narrator. Robert is a curiously understated and reluctant lover of Caroline, who almost leaves the country instead of proposing to her, while Shirley is seen as someone who has great trouble in reconciling herself to the idea of becoming subordinate. She shows little interest in her forthcoming marriage, and frequently tries to postpone it. There is a large dose of sadism in the relationship of Shirley and Louis Moore, and as Ian Watt observes in The Rise of the Novel, in their portrayal of men "the feminine and Puritan imaginations of Charlotte and Emily Brontė produced a stereotype of the male as combination of terrifying animality and diabolic intellect", which he describes as pathological. Therefore, there is a sense in which the marriages in Shirley are something to be feared as well as desired, and while they are necessary to the story, the underlying structure shows considerable resistance to the traditional resolution.

It is important to note that Charlotte Brontė's first attempts at subverting conventions in Jane Eyre had met with great success, which might have encouraged her to push boundaries even further in Shirley. The narrative strategy seems to want readers to perceive the possibility of an existence for Shirley and Caroline as self-determining and autonomous women, needing each other and other women, but perhaps not men and marriage. However, after flirting with this subversive idea Brontė shrinks from imposing it, and gives us the resolution we ultimately expect. Nevertheless, these contradictory ideas give the impression that the novel cannot decide its own status as either a radical or a conservative text. What the text does unequivocally do is demonstrate the importance of money to the traditional gender roles. As Fanny Dashwood observes in another 19th C novel with economic preoccupations, Sense and Sensibility, "an annuity is a very serious business". With her portrayal of Shirley as happy, capable and active in comparison to Caroline, Brontė shows the effect of the power that usually lies with men through primogeniture, and demonstrates that such power comes from economic muscle rather than from any innate male superiority.



Austen, J. Emma. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 [1816].

Austen, J. Sense and Sensibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 [1811].

Brontė, C. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin, 1974 [1847].

Brontė, C. Shirley. London: Penguin, 1974 [1849].

Gaskell, E. The Life of Charlotte Brontė. London: Penguin, 1975 [1857].

Miller, L. The Brontė Myth. London: Random House, 2001.

Watt, I. The Rise of the Novel. London: Random House, 2000 [1957].

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Wendy Vaizey lives in London. She has worked as an investment banker and columnist for The Times, London. Her stories have been published in UK magazines, including most recently The Sunday Express S-Magazine.

She can be reached at: Literary Potpourri

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