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Shirley (Penguin Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Charlotte Brontë
Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Our Price: $8.00
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Charlotte Brontë
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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Shirley (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780141439860
ISBN: 0141439866
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 624
Publication Date: 2006-09-26
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780141439860
ISBN: 0141439866
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 624
Publication Date: 2006-09-26
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of Shirley (Penguin Classics)
Set during the Napoleonic wars at a time of national economic struggles, Shirley is an unsentimental yet passionate depiction of conflict among classes, sexes, and generations. Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert’s brother, an impoverished tutor. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled?
Customer Reviews of Shirley (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Shirley is not as good as Jane Austen or Jane Eyre but is still a good book
Review: Charlotte Bronte's condition of England novel "Shirley" wa published following her big literary hit "Jane Eyre." The novel has always had mixed reviews and is slow moving and episodic in content.
The first part of the novel deals with the budding love between Caroline Helstone and Robert Moore. Caroline is the niece of a sober minded clergyman the Rev. Helstone. During the course of the tale she learns that Shirley's lady maid Mrs. Pryor is her mother. Caroline is painted in colors much like those of Charlotte Bronte. Like Charlotte she too plans on becoming a governess, lives in a restricted stait-laced Calvinist home and is a Tory in politics. Caroline loves the handsome Belgian born mill owner Robert Moore. Moore is not as well drawn as Bronte's Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre or sister Emily Bronte's Byronic antihero "Heathcliff" in Wuthering Heights.
The second half of the book deals with Caroline's best friend the wealthy Shirley Keeldar who is based on the strong masculine and forceful character of Emily Bronte. Shirley is courted by several country swains but falls in love with the impecunious tutor Louis Moore, the brother of mill owner Robert Moore.
The only real action of the story occurs when Robert Moore's mill is attacked by a mob of workers. The novel is set in the time of the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century when England suffered through crop failures. During the book all three of the major characters
Caroline, Shirley and Moore have health issues. Caroline is ill with a fever; Shirley is bitten by a dog and Moore is almost assasinated by an irate farmer who wants to destroy the mill.
The plot is disjointed and seems to lose focus as the reader plows through the over 500 pages of this Victorian novel. Bronte does do well in describing the Yorkshire countryside. Her use of Yorkshire dialect is well done and her knowledge of church/village life is commendable.
The book lacks the wit and repartee of a Jane Austen novel. Stick to Jane Eyre for Bronte at her best! Until the novel was published "Shirley" was a masculine name. This is a good book but not a great one.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A very engaging read!
Review: I loved this book, though admittedly it reads a bit like a rough draft with several stories which are not very well integrated. In the introduction, Bronte claims Shirley is anything but a romance, and indeed the first few chapters are so dry (focusing on the very minor and not very interesting characters of the vicars and other religious personnel) that one needs patience to continue reading.
Indeed this is understandable given that Charlotte's beloved sisters Anne and Emily and her beloved but wayward brother Branwell all died the year she wrote the first half of the novel, and she was shutting down emotionally and withdrawing from the world. Later when she wrote the last half, she was past the deepest stage of grief.
Bronte also doesn't introduce her heroine Shirley until 1/3 of the way through the novel, establishes considerable interest in the character of Robert Moore, and then has him disappear most of the second half of the novel, and introduces another major character, Robert's brother in the last portion of the book.
Finally, one sometimes has to strain to believe that individuals at this time really spoke as these characters spoke - especially the men when they on rare occasion pour out their hearts to other men in lengthy poetic prose. But often the prose of Bronte's dialogue is quite delicious and makes one wish that writers today had such a flair for such eloquent, emotionally expressive language.
The strong point of the novel: Charlotte Bronte excels in letting us into the mind and hearts of her two heroines, Caroline and Shirley, as well as in painting portraits of several of other characters, especially Robert Moore. Her rich attunement to the subtleties of the inner life of feeling (especially falling in love and the roller coast ride of affectionate rapport alternating with anguish-inducing withdrawal) and the innuendos of relationships between women and women, and men and women, is notable. Her portrayals of her primary characters are so compelling that her readers begin to deeply care about them and their happiness. The relationship between Robert and Caroline is particularly engaging, and likely to lead the reader to yearn, along with Caroline, for Robert to stand firm in his affections and not retreat into his very real and troublesome business and financial concerns.
The political subplot is also enlightening - a basically good man, Robert Moore, being drawn almost to bankruptcy while needing to industrialize his mill in order to remain in business, and as a result laying off workers and inciting a luddite rebellion against him. (Readers who are intrigued by this theme, might also enjoy Gaskell's North and South - and especially the BBC North and South film available on dvd). Bronte doesn't integrate the political plot very well with the novel, but socio-economic factors considerably influence Robert's motives and relationships more and more as the story progresses. They also lend historical interest to the novel, and a bit of substance beyond the local color of minor individuals, the relationships between the main characters, and the very heartfelt inner life of Caroline.
Although most other readers find the book slow reading, I in contrast could barely put it down.......but did skip over the "boring" parts resulting from too many minor characters (especially of a religious nature) being given too much space in the novel. But the stories of Caroline, Robert and Shirley are so engaging that the reader may indeed find the novel truly delightful, and the conclusion likewise highly satisfying.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Probably not Ms. Bronte's objective....
Review: At the beginning of Shirley, Ms. Bronte addressess the reader by telling him/her not to expect a romantic tale. After the first couple of chapters, which give a general idea of the community, Bronte focuses on the two main love interests. She addresses serious concerns about the Luddite Riots and flaws in religious organization, but I see the novel as ultimately, a romance. Less Cinderella-esque than Jane Eyre, but still about self-denial and facing reality. The book has two heroines- Shirley is not introduced until almost halfway through.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Very Slow Read: 5 Stars With Reservations
Review: This is an interesting novel but it is not a good purchase for the general reader. The Penguin version has a good introduction by Lucasta Miller with a number of interesting bits of information and notes on the novel and the Bronte sisters in general.
This novel was published in 1849 and it follows "Jane Eyre" in 1847. Readers will be very disappointed if they expect to find a similar book to "Jane Eyre" since the book is not a compelling read. The book is good, but it is very diffuse with too much talk and not enough action. It seems to wander for the first 200 pages or so and then it picks up a bit as it follows the lives of the two female characters Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone - after they are introduced part way through the novel. Up to their introduction, the novel drifts as the author jumps from one character to the other: in the opening chapters it is centered on a few members of the clergy and a struggling mill owner. The novel could be called "Caroline" since she and Shirley are equally important to the story as it evolves later in the book.
Charlotte Bronte has attempted to create a historical novel that describes the life in northern England during the Napoleonic wars. Mostly she describes the lives of two women starting around page 200, but it evolves by the end into something similar to a Jane Austen novel. In addition to these two female characters, we have various clergy and merchants brought into the story to permit the author to inject political and social commentary. Bronte is a conservative feminist and we see those ideas in some of her characters and the story.
In the beginning on page 1, Bronte warns the reader that this is not a light and entertaining novel. She says: "Do not anticipate sentiment, poetry, and reverie." That is not quite accurate since the book does contain poetry and by the last chapter - 600 pages later - it seems to evolve into a conventional but slow paced novel; she dwell on the marriage of the two female characters in the last chapter.
Following on the success of "Jane Eyre," the author did not have any trouble getting her manuscript published. In retrospect it could have used a good edit. Shirley does not appear until page 189, and one wonders if she was selected after the fact. It starts off as a commentary on the social and political times, but is carried for the last 400 pages by the lives of the two female protagonists. Some critics think that Bronte was distracted by the death of her two sisters, Emily and Anne, during the writing and that is a partial explanation for the form of the novel and its lack of focus.
So, in summary, this is an interesting novel but not a great read. It is a book more for Bronte fans rather than someone looking for a good novel for entertainment.
Review Summary: Shirley is not as good as Jane Austen or Jane Eyre but is still a good book
Review: Charlotte Bronte's condition of England novel "Shirley" wa published following her big literary hit "Jane Eyre." The novel has always had mixed reviews and is slow moving and episodic in content.
The first part of the novel deals with the budding love between Caroline Helstone and Robert Moore. Caroline is the niece of a sober minded clergyman the Rev. Helstone. During the course of the tale she learns that Shirley's lady maid Mrs. Pryor is her mother. Caroline is painted in colors much like those of Charlotte Bronte. Like Charlotte she too plans on becoming a governess, lives in a restricted stait-laced Calvinist home and is a Tory in politics. Caroline loves the handsome Belgian born mill owner Robert Moore. Moore is not as well drawn as Bronte's Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre or sister Emily Bronte's Byronic antihero "Heathcliff" in Wuthering Heights.
The second half of the book deals with Caroline's best friend the wealthy Shirley Keeldar who is based on the strong masculine and forceful character of Emily Bronte. Shirley is courted by several country swains but falls in love with the impecunious tutor Louis Moore, the brother of mill owner Robert Moore.
The only real action of the story occurs when Robert Moore's mill is attacked by a mob of workers. The novel is set in the time of the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century when England suffered through crop failures. During the book all three of the major characters
Caroline, Shirley and Moore have health issues. Caroline is ill with a fever; Shirley is bitten by a dog and Moore is almost assasinated by an irate farmer who wants to destroy the mill.
The plot is disjointed and seems to lose focus as the reader plows through the over 500 pages of this Victorian novel. Bronte does do well in describing the Yorkshire countryside. Her use of Yorkshire dialect is well done and her knowledge of church/village life is commendable.
The book lacks the wit and repartee of a Jane Austen novel. Stick to Jane Eyre for Bronte at her best! Until the novel was published "Shirley" was a masculine name. This is a good book but not a great one.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A very engaging read!
Review: I loved this book, though admittedly it reads a bit like a rough draft with several stories which are not very well integrated. In the introduction, Bronte claims Shirley is anything but a romance, and indeed the first few chapters are so dry (focusing on the very minor and not very interesting characters of the vicars and other religious personnel) that one needs patience to continue reading.
Indeed this is understandable given that Charlotte's beloved sisters Anne and Emily and her beloved but wayward brother Branwell all died the year she wrote the first half of the novel, and she was shutting down emotionally and withdrawing from the world. Later when she wrote the last half, she was past the deepest stage of grief.
Bronte also doesn't introduce her heroine Shirley until 1/3 of the way through the novel, establishes considerable interest in the character of Robert Moore, and then has him disappear most of the second half of the novel, and introduces another major character, Robert's brother in the last portion of the book.
Finally, one sometimes has to strain to believe that individuals at this time really spoke as these characters spoke - especially the men when they on rare occasion pour out their hearts to other men in lengthy poetic prose. But often the prose of Bronte's dialogue is quite delicious and makes one wish that writers today had such a flair for such eloquent, emotionally expressive language.
The strong point of the novel: Charlotte Bronte excels in letting us into the mind and hearts of her two heroines, Caroline and Shirley, as well as in painting portraits of several of other characters, especially Robert Moore. Her rich attunement to the subtleties of the inner life of feeling (especially falling in love and the roller coast ride of affectionate rapport alternating with anguish-inducing withdrawal) and the innuendos of relationships between women and women, and men and women, is notable. Her portrayals of her primary characters are so compelling that her readers begin to deeply care about them and their happiness. The relationship between Robert and Caroline is particularly engaging, and likely to lead the reader to yearn, along with Caroline, for Robert to stand firm in his affections and not retreat into his very real and troublesome business and financial concerns.
The political subplot is also enlightening - a basically good man, Robert Moore, being drawn almost to bankruptcy while needing to industrialize his mill in order to remain in business, and as a result laying off workers and inciting a luddite rebellion against him. (Readers who are intrigued by this theme, might also enjoy Gaskell's North and South - and especially the BBC North and South film available on dvd). Bronte doesn't integrate the political plot very well with the novel, but socio-economic factors considerably influence Robert's motives and relationships more and more as the story progresses. They also lend historical interest to the novel, and a bit of substance beyond the local color of minor individuals, the relationships between the main characters, and the very heartfelt inner life of Caroline.
Although most other readers find the book slow reading, I in contrast could barely put it down.......but did skip over the "boring" parts resulting from too many minor characters (especially of a religious nature) being given too much space in the novel. But the stories of Caroline, Robert and Shirley are so engaging that the reader may indeed find the novel truly delightful, and the conclusion likewise highly satisfying.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Probably not Ms. Bronte's objective....
Review: At the beginning of Shirley, Ms. Bronte addressess the reader by telling him/her not to expect a romantic tale. After the first couple of chapters, which give a general idea of the community, Bronte focuses on the two main love interests. She addresses serious concerns about the Luddite Riots and flaws in religious organization, but I see the novel as ultimately, a romance. Less Cinderella-esque than Jane Eyre, but still about self-denial and facing reality. The book has two heroines- Shirley is not introduced until almost halfway through.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Very Slow Read: 5 Stars With Reservations
Review: This is an interesting novel but it is not a good purchase for the general reader. The Penguin version has a good introduction by Lucasta Miller with a number of interesting bits of information and notes on the novel and the Bronte sisters in general.
This novel was published in 1849 and it follows "Jane Eyre" in 1847. Readers will be very disappointed if they expect to find a similar book to "Jane Eyre" since the book is not a compelling read. The book is good, but it is very diffuse with too much talk and not enough action. It seems to wander for the first 200 pages or so and then it picks up a bit as it follows the lives of the two female characters Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone - after they are introduced part way through the novel. Up to their introduction, the novel drifts as the author jumps from one character to the other: in the opening chapters it is centered on a few members of the clergy and a struggling mill owner. The novel could be called "Caroline" since she and Shirley are equally important to the story as it evolves later in the book.
Charlotte Bronte has attempted to create a historical novel that describes the life in northern England during the Napoleonic wars. Mostly she describes the lives of two women starting around page 200, but it evolves by the end into something similar to a Jane Austen novel. In addition to these two female characters, we have various clergy and merchants brought into the story to permit the author to inject political and social commentary. Bronte is a conservative feminist and we see those ideas in some of her characters and the story.
In the beginning on page 1, Bronte warns the reader that this is not a light and entertaining novel. She says: "Do not anticipate sentiment, poetry, and reverie." That is not quite accurate since the book does contain poetry and by the last chapter - 600 pages later - it seems to evolve into a conventional but slow paced novel; she dwell on the marriage of the two female characters in the last chapter.
Following on the success of "Jane Eyre," the author did not have any trouble getting her manuscript published. In retrospect it could have used a good edit. Shirley does not appear until page 189, and one wonders if she was selected after the fact. It starts off as a commentary on the social and political times, but is carried for the last 400 pages by the lives of the two female protagonists. Some critics think that Bronte was distracted by the death of her two sisters, Emily and Anne, during the writing and that is a partial explanation for the form of the novel and its lack of focus.
So, in summary, this is an interesting novel but not a great read. It is a book more for Bronte fans rather than someone looking for a good novel for entertainment.