Shirley

“If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.”

This quotation comes from the second paragraph of the novel, in which the narrator introduces the kind of story she will be telling. This excerpt sets expectations for readers for what the book will be about, also separating itself from other popular forms of literature at the time which contained things like the “sentiment, and poetry, and reverie” the narrator references. It also establishes the narrator’s style and her use of free indirect discourse throughout the novel.

“As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance—who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread—they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny—ate the bread and drank the waters of affliction.”

Here, the narrator paints a realistic picture of what life was like for working people in Yorkshire during this period in history. The inclusion of this information gives readers a deeper look into issues that are not addressed or are opposed by many of the novel’s characters. The metaphor of inheritance in this quote also can be compared to other, more literal forms of inheritance addressed in the novel.

“Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings.”

This quotation again breaks down the double bind that contemporary laborers faced. The repetition of “hated” here also emphasizes how the misery and hate they are experiencing build upon one another, and the intensity of their feelings.