Shirley

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte               Audio book:  8 hrs, 56 minutes      Hardback book 320 pages            

I had come across this title some years ago and smiled.    After many years I decided to look it up and see what it was about.    The book is well told.   I enjoyed Charlotte Bronte’s writing style and the way she turns a phrase.   I was surprised to find that the character, Shirley, isn’t introduced until almost half-way through the book.   The author first lays out the tales of 4 young curates who are pretty amusing guys and funny.   Given they are members of the clergy they use that office to get themselves into homes for free meals all the time throughout the book.    It is funny in one way that thes guys just show up at someone’s door and take it for granted they are to be fed by whomsoever’s doorstep they land on.    The sad part is that most all of the people they do this to either really can’t afford it or are really pissed that to save face they have to get up and provide food and drink for this lot.    Time of day doesn’t phase these guys.    They don’t even consider that folks might not want their company they are arrogant enough to ignore other people’s needs to serve their own.   Even the impoverished mill workers who have little work and large families to feed don’t get a reprieve.   The story progresses to the oppressed mill workers and the manager of the Mill who had no head for running a business and all but ran it in the ground.   At his death his two sons are left to deal with the mill.   The older son really wants no part of it and leaves the younger son basically to sink or swim.   Accepting the responsibility the younger son, Robert, decides to try to figure out how to get things back on track and starts laying workers off.   Living check to check workers with families rebel, this is their bread and butter and while Robert is looking only at the business aspect of it, he does not take the actual people into consideration only seeing the positions in his shortsightedness.  His workers saw him as haughty and uncaring but in truth he was just trying to find his way out of all the debt his father had buried the business in.   He layed people off rather out and out firing them hoping once the business was back on track he could bring the employees back.   Needless to say Robert was not a particularly well liked man about town.     He becomes friends with 17 year old orphan,  Caroline Hellstone,  who is being tutored in French by Robert’s sister Hortense.   And this is how we first meet 23 year old Shirley, who is a landowner and heiress an unusual thing for the times because women were encouraged to marry then whatever inheritance they may have received goes under the control of their husband.    Shirley liked maintaining control of her land and finances herself so she was slow to allow men in too close though she enjoyed flirting.    She meets Caroline at a party and the two become fast friends.   Shirley lived with her governess Mrs. Pryor.   On a visit back to the family home, Robert’s brother Louis meets Shirley and finds her fascinating.   He eventually falls madly in love with Shirley as she gets into deeper and deeper discussions with Louis as to how she wants to use her money to help people.   He notices she is always cheerful and so knowledgeable.   She is keen witted and obviously nobody’s fool.    The book is set in Yorkshire England in the early 1800s and times are tough.   Before Charlotte Bronte wrote this novel, Shirley had been a masculine name given only to men however, after the book was published it became a common name for a woman and seldom used as a male name thereafter.   Good story or more like stories because there are many different stories joined into one here,     Keep an eye on all the characters for there are some surprises afoot here.   I would recommend this to anyone, any age, who had a mind to read it,.  Being of the Victorian Age there is nothing in this book that would be offensive in any way.  

 - Shirley J.