Emily Bronte – Shirley
Shirley- can be read contrapuntally.
- published in 1849
- Looking at ways in which you can situate Shirley in relation to the Irish famine. (Raymond
Williams) >>> the Irish famine is disguised in the novel.
- Eagleton draws on psychoanalytic discourse- texts don’t know what they are about >>> there
is a disjunction between what a text seems to be about and what it is really about.
o Criticism has to look beneath the surface for meanings not known by the text.
- Bronte’s novel is concerned with class, industrialisation etc. >> but set earlier in 1811-1812,
towards the end of the Napoleonic wars.
- Also explores questions of gender, sexuality, marriage, women.
- HOWEVER ** the issues not spoken about directly are just as important- i.e. the silences.
*** Like the Irish Famine- started in 1845- killed over 1 million Irish, 2 million people exiled.
- Business of exodus and migration.
- Key Q: who is to blame? Was it a natural disaster? Perhaps, BUT English were implicated in
the famine and its consequences.
- Bronte’s father was of working class, Irish origins.
- There is an obsession in Shirley with food, meals, eating, drinking, starvation
- The w/c men in the novel are starved of food- deprived.
- The two heroines respond to patriarchal society with eating disorders.
- Food is used as a metaphor for the text > the romance-hungry reader wants something, BUT
before that has to read about class struggle, industrialisation etc- i.e. the first course must be
swallowed first.
o The food references carry a historical charge.
o The narrator withholds what the reader wants- starves/rations the romance.
- Hollows Mill- workers made redundant > exposed to poverty > this situation erupts into
violence > the mill suffers a full-scale attack.
- Neither Shirley nor Caroline are adequately sustained/nourished by society > seen in their
refusal to eat.
- There is a shadowy presence of the Irish famine in the metaphors of food and hunger.
o English as the norm- ‘others’ compared against the ‘norm’.
- Ironic naming- food connotations with Sweeting and Donne.
- Connections with Ireland in the novel e.g. Catholics, Malone- an Irish curate, minor,
stereotypical character in the novel.
- contains pseudo-science of physiognomy as a way of establishing Malone’s Irishness BUT
also associated with North Americans and slaves. >>> highlights difficulty of Anglo-Irish
colonial relations.
o Primary occupation of curates- eating and drinking.
o Charles Kingsley- disturbed by similarity of skin colour between Irish and English.
- Intertextual reference to Coriolanus- also represented in terms of food.
Gender:
Famine is written upon the bodies of the m/c females.
Caroline as a fading figure (Vol. 1, Ch. 5 first see her shadow)
Fading figure is initially associated with her unrequited love for Robert- leads to an inability to
eat- BUT illness nearly comes to death.
Problem is deeper than unrequited love- Caroline’s realities look bleak to her.
Question of female future- this shadow is what she becomes. Her illness is only cured by the
reunion/ dramatic re-encounter with her mother.
An appeal to fathers- consumption/ decline is usually associated with the w/c SO Caroline’s
problems stem from an eating disorder- Shirley is prefiguring medical discourse.
Starvation of mental and moral faculties drawn attention to through vehicle of the body.
SO 3 types of body: 1. Colonised Irish ‘other’- conspicuous because of absence. >>contrapuntal. 2.
w/c male body 3. w/c female body.
Shirley- can be read contrapuntally.
- published in 1849
- Looking at ways in which you can situate Shirley in relation to the Irish famine. (Raymond
Williams) >>> the Irish famine is disguised in the novel.
- Eagleton draws on psychoanalytic discourse- texts don’t know what they are about >>> there
is a disjunction between what a text seems to be about and what it is really about.
o Criticism has to look beneath the surface for meanings not known by the text.
- Bronte’s novel is concerned with class, industrialisation etc. >> but set earlier in 1811-1812,
towards the end of the Napoleonic wars.
- Also explores questions of gender, sexuality, marriage, women.
- HOWEVER ** the issues not spoken about directly are just as important- i.e. the silences.
*** Like the Irish Famine- started in 1845- killed over 1 million Irish, 2 million people exiled.
- Business of exodus and migration.
- Key Q: who is to blame? Was it a natural disaster? Perhaps, BUT English were implicated in
the famine and its consequences.
- Bronte’s father was of working class, Irish origins.
- There is an obsession in Shirley with food, meals, eating, drinking, starvation
- The w/c men in the novel are starved of food- deprived.
- The two heroines respond to patriarchal society with eating disorders.
- Food is used as a metaphor for the text > the romance-hungry reader wants something, BUT
before that has to read about class struggle, industrialisation etc- i.e. the first course must be
swallowed first.
o The food references carry a historical charge.
o The narrator withholds what the reader wants- starves/rations the romance.
- Hollows Mill- workers made redundant > exposed to poverty > this situation erupts into
violence > the mill suffers a full-scale attack.
- Neither Shirley nor Caroline are adequately sustained/nourished by society > seen in their
refusal to eat.
- There is a shadowy presence of the Irish famine in the metaphors of food and hunger.
o English as the norm- ‘others’ compared against the ‘norm’.
- Ironic naming- food connotations with Sweeting and Donne.
- Connections with Ireland in the novel e.g. Catholics, Malone- an Irish curate, minor,
stereotypical character in the novel.
- contains pseudo-science of physiognomy as a way of establishing Malone’s Irishness BUT
also associated with North Americans and slaves. >>> highlights difficulty of Anglo-Irish
colonial relations.
o Primary occupation of curates- eating and drinking.
o Charles Kingsley- disturbed by similarity of skin colour between Irish and English.
- Intertextual reference to Coriolanus- also represented in terms of food.
Gender:
Famine is written upon the bodies of the m/c females.
Caroline as a fading figure (Vol. 1, Ch. 5 first see her shadow)
Fading figure is initially associated with her unrequited love for Robert- leads to an inability to
eat- BUT illness nearly comes to death.
Problem is deeper than unrequited love- Caroline’s realities look bleak to her.
Question of female future- this shadow is what she becomes. Her illness is only cured by the
reunion/ dramatic re-encounter with her mother.
An appeal to fathers- consumption/ decline is usually associated with the w/c SO Caroline’s
problems stem from an eating disorder- Shirley is prefiguring medical discourse.
Starvation of mental and moral faculties drawn attention to through vehicle of the body.
SO 3 types of body: 1. Colonised Irish ‘other’- conspicuous because of absence. >>contrapuntal. 2.
w/c male body 3. w/c female body.
