Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning." Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.
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Charlotte Bronte. Shirley
Chapter I. Levitical
Chapter II. The Wagons
Chapter III. Mr. Yorke
Chapter IV. Mr. Yorke (continued)
Chapter V. Hollow’s Cottage
Chapter VI. Coriolanus
Chapter VII. The Curates at Tea
Chapter VIII. Noah and Moses
Chapter IX. Briarmains
Chapter X. Old Maids
Chapter XI Fieldhead
Chapter XII. Shirley and Caroline
Chapter XIII. Further Communications on Business
Chapter XIV. Shirley Seeks to Be Saved by Works
Chapter XV. Mr. Donne’s Exodus
Chapter XVI. Whitsuntide
Chapter XVII. The School-Feast
Chapter XVIII. Which the Genteel Reader Is Recommended to Skip, Low Persons Being Here Introduced
Chapter XIX. A Summer Night
Chapter XX. Tomorrow
Chapter XXI. Mrs. Pryor
Chapter XXII. Two Lives
Chapter XXIII. An Evening Out
Chapter XXIV. The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Chapter XXV. The West Wind Blows
Chapter XXVI. Old Copybooks
Chapter XXVII. The First Bluestocking
Chapter XXVIII. Phoebe
Chapter XXIX. Louis Moore
Chapter XXX. Rushedge – A Confessional
Chapter XXXI. Uncle and Niece
Chapter XXXII. The Schoolboy and the Wood Nymph
Chapter XXXIII. Martin’s Tactics
Chapter XXXIV. Case of Domestic Persecution – Remarkable Instance of Pious Perseverance in the Discharge of Religious Duties
Chapter XXXV. Wherein Matters Make Some Progress, But Not Much
Chapter XXXVI. Written In the Schoolroom
Chapter XXXVII. The Winding-Up
About the Author
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The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in gray rain clouds – gray they would have been by day; by night they looked sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of earth and heaven – never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hilltops, making them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared – a muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the furnaces of Stilbro’ ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the horizon – with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were gone, or to regret the “black-blue” serenity of the air-ocean which those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the back of his head, as his Irish manner was. “Tramp, tramp,” he went along the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an accommodation; “splash, splash,” through the mire-filled cart ruts, where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain landmarks – the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table, and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water. In a strange place he would instantly have realized the dream; but the company assembled in that kitchen were Mr. Helstone’s own parishioners; they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.
The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to Hollow’s Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick, lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark; not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; the rain running from the eaves, and the rather wild but very low whistle of the wind round the chimneys and through the boughs were the sole sounds in its neighbourhood.
.....
“Joe Scott!” No Joe Scott answered. “Murgatroyd! Pighills! Sykes!” No reply. Mr. Moore lifted his lantern and looked into the vehicles. There was neither man nor machinery; they were empty and abandoned.
Now Mr. Moore loved his machinery. He had risked the last of his capital on the purchase of these frames and shears which tonight had been expected. Speculations most important to his interests depended on the results to be wrought by them. Where were they?
