Charlotte Bronte's Shirley

Charlotte Bronte wrote a book you’ve heard about, if not read, called Jane Eyre. It was her first and most famous book. Or maybe you’ve seen one of the movies based on that novel.

But you probably didn’t hear about her novel Shirley, her second novel. I just finished reading it, after finding a copy in our extensive public library system.

Charlotte Bronte, (and her other famous writer/sisters) was born in Yorkshire in 1816, making her younger than John Dixon and older than Joseph Freemont Dixon, Sr., my grandfather George’s great-grandfather and grandfather.

She wrote Shirley (one of the main characters is named Shirley Keeldar) in 1849, just after the Dixon’s left for America. Most of her immediate family, including both sisters, died while she was writing the book.

The book is based in the years 1811-12 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the area where the Dixon’s lived in England. One of the features of the book is a wool mill and serious battles between mill owners and out of work mill workers. This was the era of a rebellion of mill workers, called the Luddite movement, which was caused by the displacement of skilled workers in the wool industry by two things... new technology that required fewer workers, and the financial drain of fighting Napolean Bonaparte. Parliament passed a law in support of the war, opposed by mill owners and workers alike, which prohibited trade with neutral countries, like America, that also traded with the French. The wool industry in West Yorkshire was seriously hurt by the loss of trade.

One of the minor characters, William Farren, could have been based on John Dixon. Both were mill workers called "Cloth Dressers". William Farren is very favorably portrayed by the author. Another character, the mill foreman Joe Scott, could have been based on my dad had the book been based in America 150 years later.

Much of the book reminds you of other Bronte novels, which I call "fainting romance novels". The main characters, members of the leading and secondary ruling classes, express their emotional distress ( linked inevitably to unrequited love) by taking to their sick beds. It’s still a pretty good book. It was popular when released, but has since been panned by critics and therefore isn’t well known. I agree with the author of the preface, that the book is better than the critics give credit for, and the cause may be that the critics just couldn’t appreciate that she meant the book to be a different kind of novel than Jane Eyre.

There’s a lot of talk in the book, although mostly among the gentrified characters, about going west to America. There are also lots of references... intended to be positive because of the portrayal of the ruling classes negativity towards them... to two "radical" religions... Methodism and Quakerism.

When mom was in Florida last month, she reminded me that she was able to eventually get dad to travel to many places in the world and they enjoyed their trips to China, Australia, the Panama Canal, and many other places. However, she said he was always adamant that he would never set foot in England because he despised the British class system. My dad didn’t despise much of anything in this world, even though he disagreed with a lot of folks... from Vietnam War protesters to Democrats in general. After reading Shirley, I’m wondering if his extreme disdain of high society in England was passed down from our English ancestors? Dad would have been one of the "levellers" (someone who advocated the end of class privileges) described in the book. The English fought the French during this time in part because of the fear that the French revolution would spread to England and the English royalty and gentry would "lose their heads"!

The book also gives the reader a good sense of the community structure in rural England at the time, which was based on the "parish" structure of the Church of England. At the end of the book, in the summer of 1812, the local powers, now enlightened about the needs of the poor, prepare to divvy up the local "commons", land jointly used but previously controlled by the church, into private plots for the mill workers and other lower classes. They also expand the local schools serving the poor who didn't have private tutors. However, there was no mention of instituting child labor laws, as many of the mill workers apparently continued to be children. I wonder if Joseph Freemont Dixon, Sr. worked in a mill as a child. I feel sure that his father did.