Shirley

Abstract

Shirley represents a significant departure from the style and concerns of Jane Eyre and in many respects this second published novel lacks the intensity, unity and resolution of the first. It is transparently schematic, fraught with conflicting impulses and it frequently betrays the effort of composition. Paradoxically, though, the very qualities that might seem in one sense the least satisfying are in another the things that make Shirley a most intriguing novel and one that sheds a revealing light on Charlotte Brontë’s development as a woman and a writer.