Shirley - Charlotte Bronte - 文宇宙｜Bookniverse

Shirley is one of the most ambitious novels written by Charlotte Brontë. While her famous novel Jane Eyre focuses on one woman's personal journey, Shirley casts a much wider net, weaving together the lives of a community caught up in a moment of great historical upheaval. The story was set in Yorkshire, in the north of England, during the years 1811 to 1812, a period when the Napoleonic Wars were disrupting trade and working men known as the Luddites were smashing textile machinery in protest against the threat of unemployment. Against this turbulent backdrop, Brontë introduces us to two very different young women, Caroline and Shirley, whose friendship forms the emotional heart of the novel. Together, these two characters allow Brontë to explore questions that remain relevant today: What choices should women have in their own lives? Can love and ambition exist side by side? ****************************Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 in England. She was one of six children, and the Brontë family is one of the most extraordinary in the history of English literature: three of the sisters — Charlotte, Emily, and Anne — all became published novelists of lasting importance. Their childhood was marked by loss; their mother died when Charlotte was just five years old, and two of her elder sisters died in childhood as well. Charlotte worked for several years as a teacher and a governess. Charlotte and her sisters first published their poetry and novels under male pen names — Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell — because they feared that readers and critics would not take women writers seriously. When Jane Eyre was published in 1847 under the name Currer Bell, it was an immediate sensation. Shirley followed two years later, written during one of the most heart-breaking periods of Charlotte's life: all three of her remaining siblings — her brother Branwell, her sister Emily, and her sister Anne — died within a matter of months.