Shirley by Charlotte Bronte

Readers who love Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and who expect something similar in this later novel will be sorely disappointed. They will find no highly dramatic events (such as finding out at the alter that your intended groom has a mad wife hidden in his house), no touches of the supernatural (such as hearing your beloved call to you from miles and miles away), no wild encounters with nature (such as being lost and starving on the moors). Even the male love interests are rather tame creatures, who pale in comparison to the dark, brooding Rochester in Jane Eyre. Charlotte, herself, even wrote in the first chapter: "Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something as unromantic as Monday morning...."

Evidently, most readers prefer the romantic, as do I. Shirley is seldom read nowadays, while almost everyone has read (or at least has been supposed to have read) Jane Eyre.

The story takes place against the backdrop of the Napoleonic War, when a blockade against exports and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution led to riots and unrest by factory workers against the factory owners; however, little use is made of the background except as a plot device to account for the actions of one of the male characters. The main action centers on two young women -- one of landed aristocracy and one of more humble (though genteel) circumstances -- who become fast friends, each one in unspoken love with someone. Despite the title, the novel focuses more on the life and love of Caroline, the more humble character. Shirley doesn't even appear for about 150 pages.

In tone, this novel is more similar to Trollope, but without his gentle humor and satire. In her effort to write something "real," perhaps Charlotte Bronte erred by being too "cool and solid." Perhaps it's just that readers expect something else, and are disappointed not to find it.

Still, it's an interesting, well-done novel.