There are times when the narration falters, the narrative voice is insecure and the narrative focus divided. Ultimately, I find Shirley to be a somewhat fractured work. She perhaps doesn’t do it quite as well as Gaskell. Smith’s introduction provides a useful context to the events of the novel and to some of Brontë’s concerns about it, particularly her concern that Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, which came out while Brontë was still working on Shirley, already dealt with some of the issues raised by Brontë in her own novel.Ĭertainly, in attempting a “social” or “condition of England” novel, Brontë is treading similar ground to Elizabeth Gaskell. My copy of the work is the 1981 Oxford World’s Classics edition edited by Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith. Originally published as a triple decker in 1849, Shirley is set in the early years of the nineteenth century, when mechanization of the textile industry led to the Luddite riots, a time when Napoleon had yet to be defeated. I urged my reading group to take it on, and they are still speaking to me. Most of us are familiar with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, but Shirley is probably not high on everyone’s reading list. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979-Oxford World’s Classic 1981.
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