Shirley

Shirley Keeldar is the titular character of the novel and one of its two main protagonists. Shirley comes from a wealthy, upper-class family and has recently come into her inheritance at the beginning of the novel. Like Caroline, Shirley is an orphan who grew up as a ward, to her cousins the Sympsons. She lives during the novel with her former governess, Mrs. Pryor easily makes friends among the community when she moves back to Yorkshire, her place of birth, and is highly interested in the business of her property and tenants. She quickly befriends Robert Moore when she hears about his good character from Caroline and becomes his business partner, lending him a great sum of money to fund his mill when it is in danger of closing. She sees in Caroline a kindred spirit as well, and immediately starts to seek out her friendship once they are introduced, going out of the way to make Caroline feel welcome at her home at Fieldhead. Yet she is able to see the best in everyone in Briarfield, befriending enemies like Helstone and Yorke and men of different classes like William Farren as well as the irksome curates. When Caroline in particular describes her, Shirley is revered as one of the smartest, most beautiful, and most eligible women in town.

Brontë deliberately plays with gender roles in her creation of Shirley. Although the most traditionally desirable woman in the novel, Shirley is also notable for traits that would have been considered “masculine.” Shirley’s name is distinctly masculine, having only belonged to men before the novel was published. Indeed, a new reader would have expected the protagonist to be a man (presumably Caroline’s love interest). Shirley also frequently refers to herself as “he” and “Captain Keeldar,” a habit Mrs. Pryor warns her against. For a young woman of her time and class, Shirley has an astonishing amount of individual freedom and independence. Her role in the novel is to be an example of the good women could be in society, if they were well-educated, financially independent, and free to make their own choices. Her character is also conceived partly as a foil to Caroline and partly as a means for Caroline’s narrative to develop, as their friendship develops. Discussions between the two women allow Brontë to present ideas on how women should seek to live, and what the ideal life for a woman might be.

Shirley has more choices than her counterpart Caroline and is able to do many of the things she wishes on a whim. While Caroline makes clothing for Miss Ainley’s charity work, Shirley starts a charity of her own at a moment’s notice. The narrator notes that Caroline “would wish nature had made her a boy instead of a girl, that she might ask Robert to let her be his clerk, and sit with him in the counting-house” (76), something Shirley does shortly after arriving in Yorkshire, as Robert’s landlord and equal. Shirley is also unafraid to speak her mind especially when in the presence of men. She argues with most of the characters in the novel at least once, boldly proclaiming her ideas when she knows it is right to do so. She rails against Joe Scott’s sexism, Mr. Donne’s regionalism, and Mr. Yorke’s hypocrisy, and is willing to tell even her good friends Caroline, Mrs. Pryor, Robert, and Louis when they are in the wrong. Shirley’s outspokenness is her most defining characteristic, yet Caroline notes that “Mistress she may be of all round her, but her own mistress she is not” (573). Like Caroline’s love for Robert, Shirley’s love for Louis is what guides her in the later chapters of the novel as Shirley knows he is the only one that can “control” her while still allowing her freedom over herself. In this, Shirley’s character arc displays the influence of Caroline’s softer example and allows Shirley to accept the compromise that marriage presents to her, even to the man she loves.

Robert Gérard Moore is a businessman and owner of Hollow’s Mill on the property of Fieldhead. Robert and his two siblings, Hortense and Louis, grew up in Antwerp and the Yorkshire residents often mistrust their foreign upbringing. He is described as beautiful, though he does not care enough about anything but his business to pay attention to his looks or anything else regarding his personal life. Although he descends from two prominent families, Robert has lost all of his money to his mill, which faces significant threats due to the trade blockades enacted during the concurrent Napoleonic Wars. The novel frames Robert in relation to his business: It opens on Robert awaiting the arrival of new machines for the factory late at night rather than staying at Hollow’s Cottage. Several members of the town, despite their opinions of him, fear for his safety as they know his replacement of workers for machinery has angered many. Robert is so unused to thinking of anything but business that when Caroline mentions he is in her prayers, he tells her, “When a man has been brought up only to make money, and lives to make it, and for nothing else, and scarcely breathes any other air than that of mills and markets, it seems odd to utter his name in a prayer, or to mix his idea with anything divine” (122).

Robert’s judgment is often clouded when it comes to matters other than business, and even his own interests in the mill prevent him from fully comprehending the suffering of his workers and those he has laid off because the machines have made them useless to him. While many characters like Caroline and Shirley look past these faults, the narrator is not afraid to point them out. After coldly rejecting the pleas of an honest former worker, the narrator questions, “How could Moore leave him thus, with the words, ‘I’ll never give in,’ and not a whisper of good-will, or hope, or aid?” (136). He also puts the mill above his own feelings, thinking he cannot marry the woman he loves because it would not benefit him financially. He proposes to Shirley for this reason as well, knowing she could help his business and he could thank her for her loan by marrying her even though he does not love her. In his business dealing, moral attitudes, and mercenary marriage proposal, Robert is a negative comparison to Shirley. Shirley, although a woman, is shown to be a more measured and active force for good in the community, and her perspicacity about his marriage proposal prompts his reconsideration of his life priorities.

Robert’s character does develop as, under the influence of Caroline and Shirley, he begins to see a middle and more moral way in his life. By the end of the novel, he is more able to put love before money, and has grown a moral conscience in relation to his community, the welfare of his workers, and the sharing of prosperity.