Shirley

Nice book. Good quality.

Great book but unfortunately not so great product... The book seemed worn out and cover was folded. While buying a book I expect a shiny cover too

I have eventually finished this lengthy novel after two failed attempts. I have just read it was written during a time of immense personal difficulty for the author in which she suffered several bereavements. Under these circumstances it is a wonder she managed to write anything at all, and any flaws in the narrative can be readily forgiven. Nevertheless it has weaknesses that need to be aired, but I will start by summarising the novel's strengths.Charlotte Bronte's command of the English language is unsurpassed. I would argue that she is a greater wordmaster than both Austen and Dickens whose books I have cherished. It is a pleasure to read such penmanship. She was also an expert with French and sometimes uses a French word when no English one expresses the precise meaning she desired. I wonder if we will ever see such dedicated attention to the craft of writing again.Her characterisation is superb. She never shies away from bringing minor characters into clear focus. There are lengthy passages dedicated to explaining their personalities in minute detail, none of which moves the plot forward, but remains a pleasant reading experience.The novel's main flaw is that there is no central protagonist. Shirley is not introduced until one third of the book is gone, yet Bronte seems fixed on making her the heroine from then on, putting Caroline, the main character in the early part of the book, into the shade. This was a mistake as Bronte very effectively brings the reader into sympathy with Caroline's troubles until that point.The novel starts very strongly, describing the Luddite uprisings of 1811 amid a background of social and political turmoil. We are promised a gritty drama, but harsh edges are filed away and soon we are in the territory of a rather wan love story.Poverty, ugly and raw, is untroduced then whisked from our sight as if it is unfit for genteel readers. Dickens never flinched from bringing his audience into the squalid realm of the suffering and dying. Bronte has chosen a similar theme, yet her depictions of starvation and hopelessness are sanitised and quickly remedied. Perhaps any other treatment would have been unbearable after watching her siblings die.Twice she hits us with a gritty plot twist, only to do a quick u-turn. It's almost as bad as 'and then they woke up, and the last chapter was all a dream'. What was she afraid of? She was not writing a children's fairy tale.I found the ending a little lacklustre and one of the main characters behaved completely out of character.Despite it's problems and disappointments Shirley was still enjoyable. It is very different to Jane Eyre, but it should never be dismissed.

I haven't read to the end of this novel yet. So far I can see that it is going to be rather over-wordy, as some of Charlotte Bronte's work can be. The subject matter is interesting, as it is a story set in Yorkshire, at the time when textile mills were starting to install machinery to make cloth, and were laying off workers. As a result there is suffering amongst those without work, and anger against the mill owners. There are also the personalities of the central characters which are being developed against this backdrop. So at present I am persevering with the read.

I think most people will have read 'Jane Eyre' but few have come across 'Shirley'. I was made aware of it recently on a TV programme about the Brontes. The interviewee described it as a 'wonderful book' which everyone should read. I agree. It is very little like 'Jane Eyre' and much more like the bigger books of Victorian fiction - Dickens, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell (who was of course a friend of CB) and even Thackeray. It really does draw a picture of the developing Industrial Revoluton at a time when manufacturing was growing but manufacturers were unable to sell because of the ongoing European wars. CB points very clearly to the status of women at the time and the very limited options open to them. CB did not live to see the Married Women's Property Acts later in the century, much less the struggle for female franchise or that for female education, but one has the impression that she would have approved of all of them. She laid the foundations for a change in thinking. Whereas Jane Austen writes about a similar time, she seems to accept it all as the 'status quo' - the Bennet daughters' need to marry, for instance. CB goes well beyond.

This ambitious book is not unflawed, and there are a few pages which could be cut. But it's a cracking good read, once you've got into the mindset for Victorian fiction. Bronte is excellent with strong male characters, and on the social problems of the time. There's humour in both situations and use of language, and even two comic characters. Bronte's odd fascination with confused identity - characters with two names so she can chop between them, and even a woman who calls herself a man when it suits her, surfaces, as in the later Villette. Her own experiences inform some of the action, and her prejudices also appear now and then. She's powerful on the plight of the middle class woman, as well as the wretched situation of the mill workers. The book's two heroines contrast pleasingly, much as do their two lovers. There are at least ten themes - it's stimulating stuff and unjustly neglected.

Very happy with this item. Exactly what is said I received. Fast delivery many Thanks