Though the book is named after the character Shirley, there are really 2 protagonists - Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone - and we are introduced to Caroline first. Caroline is not the titular character Shirley is. She's more of the maidenly mold, but with a difference. Caroline is soft, placcid, gentle and unassuming, shy. She's lovely, beautiful in her soft, quiet way, and full of love. But she also has the intelligence, the capacity to think outside her square. When the cousin she loves, Robert Moore, gently hints to her that he cannot return her affections because he seeks profit and business and therefore cannot afford to marry for love, she pines away, get weak and unhappy. I dont agree with this, but the second time I read this I realised neither does she. Without dampening her own love, she realises her indisposition is part of her temperament, part of her confinement. She's the rector's niece, she's hardly allowed to do anything. She knows neither of her parents, and her father is dead anyways, she has no occupation besides simplistic things like embroidery which occupy the hands but not the mind. Consequently, what can she do but mope? Of course her increasingly morbid thoughts should affect her. She wants to find her own trade, be a governess, but almost this only occupation for women was a terrible, underprivileged one, a bit like the slave trade, as Jane Fairfax likens it to in Austen's 'Emma'.
One interesting piece of information Wikipedia has provided me with is that prior to the story, Shirley was predominately a boys name, and after the story it has now developed into a girls name. Influential or what? Because Shirley really is a sparkling, unconventional character. She's an heiress, Robert Moore's fortunes lie in her hands, she's generous, big-hearted, proud, refers to herself as a gentleman (Captain Keeldar) by phases...it shows the capability of a woman without actually being masculine, and retaining all the privileges and distinctions of her gender. There's no reason why women shouldn't own land. Lydia in the Bible was a business woman. Yet she never usurped the man's place, and neither does Shirley. She is not masculine by any stretch of the imagination, but sprightly, appealing and independent.
This book is very mixed with context, the impetus for the story being the Napoleonic Wars of 1812 and prior. Industrialisation is putting people out of work, replacing them with machines. Poverty is rife in Yorkshire and other parts of England, and the employers (including millowners like Robert) can't do anything about it because they can hardly scrape by themselves. Mixed in with all this is the effect it has on personal lives - Robert cannot give way to his affections but must court profit instead, leading him to propose to Shirley Keeldar (she owns the land of his mill) for her fortune. It's a terrible mistake. Once friends and equals, she is insulted because she knows they have not a spark of love for each toher, save as siblings might and she scorns the mercentile goals that have prompted this proposal. Actually, she loves his brother Louis who is a tutor for her uncle's family, and was once her own tutor. The social divide means he is by far her inferior, but really, he is the only man who can master her, and she wants someone who can truly be her superior and take care of her. And that man is Louis, just showing the human construct of social barriers can stand in the place of what's meant to be.
It does all work out in the end. Robert learns the plight of the poor, from being at the mercy of unempathising women when he is shot by vengeful rebels who are rioting against the employers replacing them with machines. His rejection by Shirley teaches him to follow his heart instead of material things. And he so when good tidings come, the war is over and the barricade preventing other countries from buying his wool and silk and things falls, he marries Caroline and makes generous plans for employing more, paying better wages, being more humane. They cannot all be achieved, but the thoughts are in his heart, which shows he has developed.
This most excellent book, being a classic, can be read online on any number of book sites, and there's plot summaries and articles galore, for which reason I've only written my impressions of the work and not the broad points.
