“In different forms, the fairies have always been among
us. They have inhabited the British
Isles for at least fifteen hundred years; though sometimes forced underground,
they have always re-emerged.” (9)
- Carole G. Silver Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian
Consciousness (1999)
“Charlotte invites the reader to put on his spectacles and look
for a moral; but she precedes this with an account of ‘the last fairish that
was seen on this country side.’ The
implication is that the reader should look for the ‘fairishes;’ i.e., the
metaphysical dimension, using his or her imagination.” (180)
-
Elisabeth Imlay Charlotte Brontë
and the Mysteries of Love: Myth and
Allegory in Jane Eyre (1989)
I admit to wanting to read Charlotte Brontë’s last two novels in part because
of the role of the fairyfolk in Jane Eyre. As I read Shirley this month I have
been fascinated, once again, with all of the references to fairies, though it
has become apparent to me that how the fairy theme functions in this novel is
quite different from how it functioned in Jane Eyre. My analysis of the narrative in this blog
will be guided by long interest in fairy lore – in both (1) Pagan myth and mysticism
and in (2) literature; including 19th century novels, folklore
studies, collections of fairy stories – as well as by my reading in recent
months of the two books referenced in the epigraphs above. [Both are excellent sources, well written and
thought provoking].
The second epigraph refers to the last reference to fairies in
the novel, appearing on the last page of the text, describing the disappearance
of the fairies from the Hollow where Robert Moore’s mill was built. In
what follows, I hope to lead you on an interesting journey through the text,
stopping at all of the most important references to fairy or fairy-associated
phenomena (solitary places, lonesome woods or roads, Oak, Ash or Thorn trees, old
ruins, etc), ending with a suggestion as to how I find the fairy and their posited
existence functioning in the story taken as a whole; as a view of life-as-lived
by the characters to which it introduces us.
I was not disappointed when the first reference to fairy comes
in the very first chapter – called “Levitical” – wherein the three curates are
introduced. The housekeeper where the
curates have gathered and are carrying on in their usual style fears Mr Malone,
as he is strong and tall, and has a bearing which reminds her of “a certain
class of the Irish gentry.” (6).[1] If a reader is not aware that ‘Gentry’ is a
term of inverted respect for the fairyfolk, they might not pick-up on this
bivalent reference. Mrs Gale could be
simply saying Mr Malone is akin to the Irish Gentry class; those who lorded their
power over the Irish people, but this could also be a reference to the
fairyfolk.
Later in the same chapter a vision of Michael Hartley – described
paradoxically as a mad Calvinist (Chapter VII) and here as an Antinomian
(someone who denies the authority of moral law; at least as interpreted by hose
in power over others), a violent Jacobin (a French political group dedicated to
extreme egalitarianism and violence) and Leveller (someone who seeks the
reduction or elimination of disparity between the upper and lower realms of
society; in the 19th century it would also refer to those who
attempt to destroy the means-of-production as a way of liberating people from
the machines) – is related in which he:
“… heard what he thought was a band at a distance, bugles,
fifes, and the sound of a trumpet: it came from the forest, and he wondered
that there should be music there.” (15)
As this vision unfolds, he sees small
soldiers coming from the wood and marching to Nunnely Common, where he watched
them parading in formation. He witnessed
this apparition for over half-an-hour, and when they marched away, they headed
for Briarfield. It is quite possible to
interpret this vision as an apparition of fairies trooping through Nunnely
Wood, playing their music and ‘performing’ secret rituals, observed by a mortal
who happened to be in the ‘right place at the right time.’ Fortunately, no harm
apparently comes to him as it might have, given other stories of this kind of
fairy apparition.
I said Hartley was described ‘paradoxically’ because, on the
one hand, a Calvinist is usually someone very obedient to the Law of God and by
extension to the legitimate laws of earthly kingdoms. That he is “mad” adds another dimension, and
what Charlotte intended by describing him as a “mad Calvinist” is not apparent
to me, but in juxtaposition with the other descriptors, and with the fact of
his having visions and is often inebriated, opens for me the possibility that
he is fairy-touched, and that he may have been ‘away’ at some point.[2] Everything he stands for, as an Antinomian, a
Jacobin and a Leveller, identifies him as having values similar to those oft
ascribed to the fairyfolk.
Though Michael’s values are more extreme, the fairyfolk were
seen as people of Nature, identified with the green natural world, lovers of
their goddess; the Earth—and associated with the Moon, often described as “Lamp
of the Faeryfolk” as the fairy are often associated with Night and nighttime
scenes, as in Michael’s vision. As such
the fairyfolk were opposed to laws, customs and practices that endangered or
polluted Nature; their home and a manifestation of their goddess. Someone who is faery-touched is often left
unable to function well in their own society; possibly having visited the fairy
world and come back ‘changed.’ While the
text never indicates that Michael Hartley was ever ‘away,’ as the term goes for
someone who had visited or been taken into fairyland, his being fairy-touched
might help explain why he was not harmed or attacked when he saw the fairy
trooping out of the woods. It is also
interesting that whenever Michael appears in the story, it is in a nighttime
scene.
After these opening references in the first chapter, it somewhat
perplexed me that neither in Chapter II – where Robert Moore is introduced – nor
Chapter III – where the Rev Helstone; Caroline’s uncle, is introduced – are there
any references to fairy. But then, the
Mill in the Hollow is not a place where fairies would deem to haunt and call
their own, as they are said to be opposed to industrialism, especially when it disrupts
Nature and paves over its beauty and power.
A rectory would not usually be frequented by the fairyfolk, either, as
they are oft said to be in opposition to religions that oppress their adherents,
repress human nature and deny the powers of Nature. Chapter IV, which continues to introduce Mr
Hiram Yorke – also contains no fairy references. This may be because of Mr Yorke’s character, however,
for Charlotte says of him: “He believed in God and heaven; but his God and heaven were
those of a man in whom awe, imagination, and tenderness lack.” (47)
As it takes an active and creative imagination
to have fairy-faith – not to mention an authentic faith in ‘God’ – this in-itself
may have been all that it took for Mr Yorke to be blocked from having fairy
experiences. The common prejudice
against imagination is clearly expressed in relation to Mr Yorke’s character,
when the text says: “[W]ho cares for
imagination? Who does not think it a rather dangerous, senseless,
attribute—akin to weakness—perhaps partaking of frenzy – a disease rather than
a gift of the mind?” (48) Creative
people – including genuinely spiritual people – care for the imagination and
curate it, often using it to liberate themselves from the shackles of mere
conformity. Yes, it can be seen by the
establishment as dangerous, and the bias that people of imaginative abilities
are ‘weak’ gives the status quo a way of dismissing the imaginative person’s
gift and the truths which may arise from its employment.
It is significant that immediately after this diatribe against
the imagination, Charlotte Brontë
– via her narrator – offers one of the most powerful descriptions of the Poet
in this novel. Referring to the ‘true poet,’ we are told:
“[T]he true poet, quiet externally though he [sic] may be, has
often a truculent spirit under his placidity, and is full of shrewdness in his
meekness, and can measure the whole stature of those who look down on him, and
correctly ascertain the weight and value of the pursuits they disdain him for
not having followed. It is happy that he
can have his own bliss, his own society with his great friend and goddess,
Nature, quite independently of those who find little pleasure in him, and in
whom he finds no pleasure at all.” (49)
As a Poet I find this description, and
the whole rest of the paragraph that follows, to ably reference the Poet’s
relationship to Imaginative Visioning and Re-Visioning of the world in which
(s)he finds him/herself. This text also
points to another theme associated with the fairyfolk: their love of music,
poetry and dancing. Throughout this
novel, characters talk about poetry and literature, and in Charlotte’s and her
character’s descriptors of these arts, one can hear a fairy familiarity. Nature often functions as a Goddess for Poets
– in the aspects of the Moon or the Earth herself – and those who embrace
Nature as their creative Muse are less likely to willingly exploit and abuse
the natural world.
In Chapter V, which introduces Robert’s home-life with his
sister Hortense, it is said that in the night “Mr Moore haunted his mill, his
mill-yard, his dye-house, and his warehouse, till the sickly dawn strengthened
into day.” (63) It could be asked how you can ‘haunt’ – in one
sense – without being a ghost yourself, or in part somehow ‘dead’ – perhaps in one’s
soul or spirit? And there is not a
single reference to fairies in the whole chapter.
The next five chapters read very much as a social novel,
introducing Caroline Helstone, the Methodist ‘dissenters’ in Briarfield, the
residents of Briarmains; the home of the Yorkes – and other aspects of the
world. It is not until Chapter XI that
we get another reference to anything related to fairy. That is the Chapter in
which the titular character of the novel – Shirley Keeldar – is
introduced. During Mr Helstone’s and
Caroline’s first visit with the “heiress of Fieldhead” and the “Lord of
Briarfield Manor,” Shirley professes that she thinks the Hollow with the mill
within it to be Romantic. (209) At the
end of the chapter, as her company is leaving, Shirley is seen “waving her
hand, white as a lily and fine as a fairy’s” (209), after which she “vanished
within the porch” while Mr Helstone and Caroline leave the Manor house. This is the first reference to fairy in
relation to Shirley Keeldar. While
metaphorical, the fact that she ‘vanishes’ from the porch, could reference the fairy
ability to become invisible, or to transport oneself to another location by an
act of will.
At the beginning of Chapter XII, which is full of significant
references, is where Shirley is listening to the birds and chirruping to them
(see my reference to this in “Reading Shirley I”); which seems like an
attempted communication, or even a ‘dialogue,’ and is one of many signifiers of
her love of Nature’s creatures. It may
imply an identification with Nature as a goddess; something Shirley will affirm
as the story unfolds. Later in the
chapter, Caroline and Shirley go walking together in the Nunnwood; a remnant
stand of ancient woodland wherein there is a ruined nunnery. There, the two women, becoming friends, spend
part of an afternoon, drawing and discussing life, men and marriage. They aver that their time together would be
diminished if men were with them; it would dispel the charm of the place. The Wood is thus a locus of feminine power
and empowerment. They allude to the
place having been a haunt of Robin Hood; whose mythic predecessor, before he
was reimagined as an actual historical human being – was Robin Goodfellow—a
fairy ‘gentleman.’ And before that, he
was Puck of the Forest. The two new friends
speak of worshipping Nature, and how it would be sufficient for life; it alone
would fill the human heart sufficiently!
The trees of the forest – Oak, Ash, Birch and Beech – are often
associated with the fairyfolk. Only
Thorn is not mentioned of that mystical triad – Oak-Ash-Thorn – that is indicative
of fairy magic and the presence or nearness of the fairy world. Though Caroline protests, “I disdain to be a
Pagan,” (220) there is much of naturalistic Paganism in this chapter!
There is an evening described later in this same chapter in
which a fairy consciousness; an enchantment – overtook Caroline and
Shirley. The description of Shirley’s
state is consistent with that ‘kind’ of consciousness in which the fairyfolk
can be encountered:
“Shirley sat at the window, watching the rack in heaven, the
mist on earth, listening to certain notes of the gale that plained like
restless spirits – notes which, had she not been so young, gay, and healthy,
might have swept her trembling nerves like some omen, some anticipatory dirge:
in this her prime of existence and bloom of beauty, they but subdued vivacity
to pensiveness. Snatches of sweet
ballads haunted her ear’ now and then she sang a stanza: her accents obeyed the
fitful impulse of the wind; they swelled as its gusts rushed on, and died as
they wandered away.” (227)
She is falling into an enchantment, in
harmony with manifestations of Nature and with the Night. As this was happening to Shirley, Caroline was
pacing and murmuring poetic fragments to herself “withdrawn to the farthest and
darkest end of the room.” (227)
I know this state; the kind of
consciousness being described—and it is consonant with what is known as fairy
consciousness. It is often melancholy;
not in the modern usage of ‘depressed’ but in the older sense of ‘knowing and
understanding the pain and suffering of life, yet being willing to pursue life,
embrace and live it, affirming its worth despite the pain and suffering that
may come.’ What Caroline sings is a song
– “The Castaway” by William Cowper – which tells of a crewman washed overboard
at sea during a story, his crewmates watching helplessly hoping, as he
drowns. It is narrated by the fated
seaman who dies in the end as well. [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44027/the-castaway] Together, the two enchanted women discuss how
the poet was affected by the story, how Cowper was broken-hearted when he wrote
it, and how they pity the drowning seaman.
Caroline attributes Cowper with the gift of poetry, describing it as
“the most divine” gift bestowed on humankind.
She then speaks of poetry, expressing a Romanticist ideal of feeling and
experience over against mere reason. (228)
This augments the description of the
true poet in Chapter IV, giving poetry its essential nature as auguring “real
feeling.” Here, she is not disparaging
learning as such – as she herself is a reader of books and cares for knowledge
– but only expressing the ideal of poetry as relating genuine feeling. It is an implicit critique of the Classicist
poetry of the 18th century; which was all too often a display of
intellect and attainment, a vaunting of reason up over the other human
faculties – especially intuition and authentic emotion. Fairies, being often associated with passion,
eros and intuition, might very well relate to this idea of poetry! The fact that these two women have been enchanted
by the weather intimates a possible fairy-inspiration behind their dialogue,
which continues in a discussion of Cowper and Rouseau.
It is in the next chapter where Shirley relates to Robert how
her nurse used to tell her stories of the fairies being in the Hollow, before
the mill was built (239; for my account, see “Reading Shirley II: The
End of Shirley”). After Shirley
mentions Michael Hartley in the way of warning Robert about wandering late in
the woods, Robert tells her he has already met up with the man, at night, and
in the woods, and that he liked the encounter! Shirley is unnerved, and when she asks Robert
where he met Hartley, he says:
"In the deepest, shadiest spot in the glen, where the water
runs low, under brushwood. We sat down
near that plank bridge. It was
moonlight, but clouded, and very windy.
We had a talk.” (240)
This setting is a characteristically
fairy meeting-place. Robert has gone to
the heart-of-the-wood, near flowing water – always something in which fairy
voices are said to be sometimes heard by the attendant – and in the moonlight;
the Moon being the “Lamp of the Faeryfolk” – is listening to the man he has met
there. Is this man, Michael Hartley –
human or fairy? Is he influenced by the
fairyfolk in his ravings which, while dressed in Christian terms, are in
sympathy, as I suggested in my previous blog, with fairy values. The wind is also blowing – just as it was on
the night when Shirley & Caroline were enchanted. A strong wind is often associated with the
fairyfolk in their “wild ride” across the sky, bringing devastation and even
death in its wake, as the folklore and fairyfaith of the time oft asserts.
Michael Hartley, while clearly a human being, is also termed a
“madman” who has visions and who raves against those in power! Robert allows that “There is a wild interest
in his ravings.” (240). Robert professes
that “The man would be half a poet, if he were not wholly a maniac; and perhaps
a prophet, if he were not a profligate.” (240)
Michael prophecies that Robert is damned and will be in Hell; as the
visionary sees the Mark of the Beast on Robert’s brow! Though Christian in its terminology, the
prophecy could well suffice as a fairy condemnation on the man who is running
the mill – which is being mechanized to help improve profits – in a place that
was once a fairy vale. Michael, too, may
here be under the influence of the fairyfolk, as he is also in the moonlight,
experiencing the high winds, and hearing the whispering of the water of the
brook beneath the bridge on which they are sitting!
Later in the same chapter, Shirley and her companion Mrs Pryor
offer to take Caroline on a sea-trip to the North Atlantic, where they hope to
see seals, and also mermaids.
While not fairy, mer-maids are another kind of preternatural creature
associated with the liminal horizons of our actual, day-to-day worlds. That Shirley is inspired by the possibly of
seeing mermaids, and describes an imagined night on deck when she and Caroline
would witness one alongside the ship, speaks to her mythic imagination; which
is revealed at other points in the narrative as well—she being the kind of
dreamer who, if not of fairy descent herself – has a fairy-like spirit.
Even later in the same chapter, Robert arrives at Fieldhead –
Shirley’s home – having some official papers for them to mull over and discuss
together. Caroline, who would
like nothing better than to sit with Robert and talk, as they used to do, yearns
to go home and be away from the scene of Robert and Shirley talking
business. As she waits to go, she thinks
of Robert’s house; the flowers in the garden there being dear to her, and how
the parlor – where she and Robert might sit together again one day – is like an
earthly paradise. She makes an analogy
between herself and “the First Woman” and how Eve must have yearned to return
to the Garden. This passage is
interesting as it further expresses
Caroline’s mythic sense of place and an imaginative mind open to
cosmic significances. The Garden of Eden
is in some sense interchangeable in this narrative with the ‘Garden of Nature,’
wherein fairy dwell. At least, so it
seems to me.
Caroline has to wait to leave until 9 PM – as her maid Fanny
would be coming for her at that pre-determined time – and when Fanny does come,
Robert decides to leave with Caroline, telling the maid to go on ahead of
them. They walk together in converse,
during which Robert laments how long it has been since Caroline was at the
cottage – the house Caroline was just earlier alluding to as like the Garden of
Eden to her – to which Caroline responds that while she has not been there, she
has been near it. She admits that she
walks along the ridge above the Mill – tarrying under a lone Thorn tree –from
there looking down on the scene in the Hollow; waiting to see Robert’s form in
the window after he lights his candle (for an instance of this, see p. 235). Robert muses how odd it is that he has never
encountered her, as he often takes evening walks along the same pathways. Caroline admits that he has passed by her
quite near, twice, and each time in company with another. One of Robert’s companions had been Mr
Yorke. The other, she refers to as “that
fairy shadow” – which epithet Caroline uses to reference Shirley!
Robert is surprised by these near-but-non-encounters with
Caroline on his night walks, and teases that the ring on her finger might well
be the Ring of Gyges. This is a magic
ring mentioned in Plato’s Republic (Book II), which gives the bearer the
gift of invisibility. It is the device used
to facilitate the philosophers’ discussion of justice; i.e., whether a person
who could walk around invisible might do things – unseen and undetected – that
he or she might not do, were they not in possession of the ring. Invisibility is also a talent of the
fairyfolk, who can move about amongst ordinary mortals without being detected
and listen-in on their conversations; just as Caroline could have done with
regard to Robert in her seclusion near him in the Night. Caroline, however, avers that she never
eavesdrops on Robert and his fellow walkers, at which confession Robert waxes
into the mysterious and exclaims how Caroline’s watchfulness now haunts
him. He says:
“When I walk out along the hedgerows in the evening after the
mill is shut – or at night, when I take the watchman’s place – I shall fancy
the flutter of every little bird over its nest, the rustle of every leaf, a
movement made by you; tree-shadows will take your shape; in white sprays of
hawthorn, I shall imagine glimpses of you, Lina, you will haunt me.” (257)
Robert is here experiencing what it is
like to be fairy-visited; haunted by the invisible inhabitant in the night –
Caroline herself now clearly being likened to a fairy! Hawthorne is a faery-tree, long associated
with visions or visitations from the Otherworld wherein the faeryfolk dwell. He will think of every small movement of
foliage caused by her invisible presence.
Her being near will cause the birds to flutter. The “white-sprays” are the blossoms of the
Hawthorne, metaphoring Caroline as dressed in white; the White Lady – which may
imply the Lady of the Moon; the Goddess of Inspiration and the “Lamp of the
Faeryfolk.”
This interchange between them opens Robert to confession of
two apparitions he has had of Caroline.
One in the mill and another at his house. In the first, he thought he saw Caroline’s
form amongst the girls working at the other end of one of the long rooms, and
attributes the apparition to an effect of sunbeams; a play of shadow and
light. Yet when he attempted to draw
nearer to her, as he did, he saw what he thought had been Caroline ‘glide away’
(258). Caroline asserts that she would
not come into Robert’s mill unless he had invited her! Robert then relates another apparition of
her; in his cottage, this time, after he came home late one night. Instead of finding his sister sitting up and
waiting for him, he says he thought he saw Caroline sitting near a window, with
“broad moonbeams” pouring in through the panes.
The description of the apparition is riveting:
“For half a second, your fresh, living face seemed turned
towards me, looking at me; for half a second, my idea was to go and take your
hand, to chide you for your long absence, and welcome your present visit. Two steps forward broke the spell: the
drapery of the dress changed outline; the tints of the complexion dissolved,
and were formless: positively, as I reached the spot, there was nothing left
but the sweep of a white muslin curtain, and a balsam plant in a flower plot,
covered with a flush of bloom – “sic transit,”[3] et
cetera.” (258)
The description sent a chill down my
back, as I realized I had just read an account of a haunting and then, to my continued
surprise (and pleasure), Caroline says “It was not my wraith, then? I almost thought it was.”
Robert does not dispel the idea that Caroline might have ‘sent
forth her wraith,’ as witches and fairy are known to do, but concludes by
saying all was normal and natural enough in the room, after the apparition was
concluded. There is a clear resonance
here that amplifies the identification of Caroline with the fairyfolk. For it is they – as well as occult
practitioners – who could visit a cottage – or any location – in spectral form;
to ‘haunt’ those in residence. At this
point in the novel, I began to accept that both Shirley and Caroline were those
in whom the “fairish” – as the narrator’s housekeeper called the fairyfolk on
the last page of the novel – were still being “heard” in the Hollow.
After Robert leaves Caroline go into her
house, Caroline met the memory of Robert in a vivid presencing; in and
enchanting way—causing her to sit up, wakeful, for most of the rest of the
night. In fairy terms, I see in this a
continued communion with Robert; one in which she was experiencing him present with
her, rather than sending forth her fetch to him. While this can be understood in naturalistic,
psychological terms; having a vivid impression of someone else via memory – it
is tinctured, for me, with possible fairy potentialities.
The next fairy-reference comes in Chapter XVII “The School
Feast.” After the parade and festivities
are concluded, Shirley entices Caroline to walk out across a field to intercept
Robert who has left without bidding them goodbye. Playfully miffed, they go out to meet him
along his way. Getting to a section of
road where they expected Robert to come along in time, they entered “a narrow
shady spot, embowered above by hawthorns, and enamelled underfoot by daisies”
(321). Once again, the scene is
associated with one of the traditional fairy trees. There they wait for Robert to come up the
road. As he approaches, the “long sprays
of the hawthorns” kept the two women concealed from his sight. Shirley steps out and says, “You omitted to
bid us good-bye,” to which Robert responds:
“Omitted to bid you goodbye!
Where did you come from? Are you
fairies? I left two like you, one in
purple and one in white, standing at the top of a bank, four fields off, but a
minute ago!” (321)
Being in two places at once,
bi-locating – is another talent of the fairyfolk. Purple and white are associated with certain
kinds of fairy; being the colours of their regal clothing.
In the next chapter – wittily titled “Which the Genteel Reader
is Recommended to Skip, Low Persons Being Here Introduced” (lol) – we find
Shirley and Caroline, after leaving Robert on the road, coming to the church
were the after-festival service is being held – but not going in. What follows is Shirley’s vision out of her
creative imagination of Nature and her Titaness_ Eve. Shirley hesitates going into the church when
she begins to see this vision of Nature; which is prefaced with a reference to
the church and the tombs around it having a divine look; that is, with the
fading day’s “crimson gleam” on them.
This speaks of that faery melancholy I mentioned earlier; the connection
between life and inevitable death represented by the graveyard, as well as the
juxtaposition of the church – which represents life – sitting amidst a yard of
tombs and graves. This existential
situation then inspires Shirley in a vivid visioning. She says:
“Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling before
those red hills. I see her prostrate on
the great steps of her altar, praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for
travellers in deserts, for lambs on the moors, and unfledged birds in
woods. Caroline, I see her! And I will tell you what she is like; she is
like what Eve was when she and Adam stood alone on earth.” (325-6)
Caroline protests that what Shirley is
describing is not “Milton’s Eve,” to which Shirley avers that Milton,
for all his genius, could not ‘see’ the real Eve; for he could not see past his
own cook! She then argues, envisioning,
that the real Eve was a “woman-Titan,” giving a description of her that may
remind the reader of both Isis and the Virgin Mary. She is the biblical “First Woman” re-clothed
in classical mythic garb. When Caroline
says she wishes to go into the church, Shirley protests that she will not go
in, but stay outside with her mother Eve, professing her love for her, and calling
her a “mighty being.” (327)
This is a startling and refreshing passage. Caroline asserts that she cannot grasp it;
that Shirley has got “such a hash of Scripture and mythology into her head”
(327) that she cannot make sense of it.
Yet she is curious about what Shirley has ‘seen’ kneeling up on the
hills at their horizon. Shirley’s vision
of the Titaness-Eve has themes drawn from esoteric and apocryphal traditions,
as well as undertones that connect it to fairylore, in which these kinds of paganized versions of Biblical myth are often present. Nature is praying; to whom? God or Goddess? The Titaness Eve is kneeling and interceding
for mortals, animal and human. Shirley
avers that she sees Eve. Michael
Hartley is not the only visionary in this novel!
The next reference to fairy comes at the beginning of the next
chapter (XIX, A Summer Night). Shirley
is about to leave the Rectory after a visit with Caroline, claiming there to be
just enough light to guide her safely to Fieldhead. Caroline objects, and is
willing to ask Fanny to accompany Shirley, to which Shirley responds that she
has no fear of walking about in her own parish, and that she would make the
trek any fine night, even later in the evening that it is. And why?
“for the mere pleasure of seeing the stars, and the chance of meeting a
fairy.” (338) Shirley need not be afraid
of such an encounter, at one level, because she is fairylike herself and
perhaps even fairy-graced?
There is the
ordinary sense in which she is not afraid in her own parish as she is the “Lord
of the Manor of Briarfield” – and who would really dare attack her? But that is flimsy self-confidence as well as
perhaps legitimate confidence in the people in Briarfield and surrounding
areas—whom she has gotten to know. But
the reference to “the chance of meeting a fairy,” I think, skews the meaning of
her resolve toward being fairy and even fairy-graced. Being fairy-like – she wants to meet another
of her ‘kind?’ And has she not
contemplated the possibility of Michael Hartley being out afoot in the woods at
night?
In the next chapter, (XXI, Mrs Pryor) there is a natural scene
depicted that evokes a sense of fairyland; a rich place of solitude and old
trees at the narrowing end of the Hollow.
It is described as a “wooded ravine” with the millstream running through
it. Caroline and Mrs Pryor have taken a
walk together, and come to this place of potential enchantment:
“Here, when you had wandered half a mile from the mill, you
found a sense of deep solitude: found it in the shade of unmolested trees;
received it in the singing of many birds, for which that shade made a
home. This was no trodden way: the
freshness of the woodflowers attested that foot of man seldom pressed them: the
abounding wild-roses looked as if they budded, bloomed, and faded under the
watch of solitude … Here you saw the sweet azure of blue-bells, and recognized
in pearl-white blossoms, spangling the grass, an humble type of some star-lit
spot in space.” (379)
There is so much to unpack in these
sentences! In folklore, the fairyfolk
are fond of – and dwell in – unspoiled Nature; the more ‘developed’ a field or
wood is, the less they feel at-home in it.
That few people travel through this ravine makes it lonesome, and
therefore a place where fairyfolk might visit and frolick, potentially
presencing to mortals. The fact that no
human eye sees the budding, blooming and passing of the wildflowers likewise makes
it attractive to fairy. They favour the
lonesome places in Nature. And that it
is so close to the mill – just half-a-mile away – suggests the possibility that
while the fairyfolk may have evacuated from the Hollow itself, because of
industrialization and the attendant noise and pollution, they might still
haunt this nearby locale. The comparison
of the white blossoms in the grass with the stars in the heavens brings to mind
the theme of the fairyfolk walking by starlight and not in the bright light of
the sun. The Moon is their
Mistress. Though Mrs Pryor and Caroline
do not have an encounter with fairies, the very fact that Caroline is there
makes them, in some sense, present_ if not presencing.
While the secluded ravine is a perfect place for a
fairy-encounter, Mrs Pryor engages with it in a rational way as they walk
through it. She names the flowers and
the birds for Caroline, and I gathered the sense from this that her connection
with the woodland is not intuitive or mystical, but practical and rational, her
motives educative where Caroline is concerned.
I wonder if this is correct? Does
this characterize Mrs Pryor’s character throughout the novel? Perhaps with good reason. As a governess she was charged with teaching
and educating, and so her relationship to nature as to the world may be more
rational than that of the Poet, Musician or Artist, whose reason – when rightly
employed – serves and guides their intuition, emotion and creative
imagination. While not alienating the
fairy that might be in the place, she is – like Mr Yorke mentioned earlier,
though in a less unnatural way – not able to experience the fairy nature of the
locale, though she clearly experiences its natural beauty?
The next episode I would like to focus attention on is from
Chapter XXII (Two Lives), which takes place after the mill has been attacked
and Robert has left the area, seeking the leaders of the rioters. Shirley’s life-at-home becomes the focus of
much of the chapter and, after a description of a day at Fieldhead – during
which she tries to sew but cannot focus on it.
She goes out to feed fowl at her door, checks on her horses and then looks
in on the sheep and cows – finally settling in to read a book. Though we don’t know what book it is, it
clearly has the effect upon the reader of refreshing her, ‘refilling’ and
“re-warming her heart.” (394)
As the moon rises, casting its light over the page she is
reading, the mood of the narrative changes, once again, being interrupted by
something transcendence-inducing. The
physical environment of the room in which she had been reading takes on a new
cast. The twilight affects her, making
“earth an Eden,” and “life a poem” (394).
She enters into an uplifted state, which has a “genie” quality to it,
and is soon raised to a level that can be understood in mystical terms as communion-in-transcendence. Charlotte describes this experience in terms familiar
to mystics and poets alike, who are sometimes gifted with such experiences,
saying:
“A still, deep, inborn delight grows in her young veins;
unmingled – untroubled; not to be reached or ravished by human agency, because
by no human agency bestowed.” (394)
Charlotte calls this a “Gift of God”
and also “the free dower of Nature to her child,” seeming to equate – as
often in Jane Eyre as well – ‘God’ and ‘Nature.’ Next, she says, “This joy gives her
experience of a genii-life.” While this
passage contains no literal reference to fairies, this reference to genies can
be understood as a symbolic and mythic cognate.
The genie was a mythological creature, like the fairy, originating in
Islamic culture, the genii having characteristics comparable to the
fairyfolk. Charlotte would have been
most familiar with them from The Thousand and One Nights – a book of
Arabian tales – first published in English in 1704-1712. Though a genie oft becomes a servant of
mortals – as in the tale of Alladin’s lamp – they are also protectors of
places, people and sacred sites. They
were associated with springs, hills, caves and other natural sites, wherein
they could be encountered. If they were
dis-respected, they would revenge themselves upon those who hurt or abused
them. All these characteristics were likewise
attributed to fairies in European lore.
As such, the “experience of a genii life” that Shirley is having
is another way of speaking of her being identified as a fairy; even perhaps
fairy-graced? The experience she then
has, which lifts her into a state of self-transcendence can be read in mystical
terms as her being out-of-herself; in ek-stasis. Here is the narrator’s description of
Shirley’s experience; the “genii-life” given to her by Nature and/as God:
“Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all verdure and light,
she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence angels looked down on the
dreamer of Beth-El, and her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of
life as she wishes it. No – not as she
wishes it; she has not time to wish; the swift glory spreads out, sweeping and
kindling, and multiplies its splendours faster than Thought can effect his
combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter her longings. Shirley says
nothing while the trance is upon her – she is quite mute; but if Mrs Pryor
speaks to her now, she goes out quietly, and continues her walk up-stairs in the
dim gallery.” (394-5)
Note that in this trance she is going
by “green steps” – these are touched with Nature; she is still on the
ground. Going to “glad hills” – a place
where genii as well as fairy might be found, being “all verdure and light,” she
would seem to be entering into a fantasy-land. “Verdure” is a word describing the lush,
fecund green of Nature. And then, she is
‘transported’ to a place near the realms of angels! “The Dreamer of Beth-El” refers to Jacob in
the Bible (Genesis 28:10 – 28:22), where the patriarch has a vision of
Yahweh. Jacob dreams of a “Stairway to
Heaven” and sees angels ascending and descending upon it. Jacob also experienced Yahweh standing next
to him and speaking to him! Then note
the transience of time during the vision-trance! Shirley doesn’t see life as she wishes it,
because she is not in ordinary time.
There is no-time. Not that there
isn’t enough of it, but it doesn’t flow in same way as it does normally to a mortal
consciousness.
“Glory” may refer to seeing a saint’s halo or rainbow; it may
also refer to a translucent circle of water vapour illuminated around the Moon
or a star. This glory is spreading out
in wondrous ways, faster than Thought!
Though she might want to speak, she cannot; she is in fairy time (or
divine time, depending on whether you want to read this text in Christian or
Pagan terms). She is mute, and then the
last couple phrases are quite intriguing!
In what sense – in which ‘reality’ – does she continue her walk
“up-stairs” in the “dim gallery?” Is she
simply leaving the parlor where Mrs Pryor has spoken to her, or is she
ascending the stairway to heaven in the Beth-El reference; ascending into a
‘higher reality’ – into Fairyland? The text leaves me wondering!
This episode ends with the narrator criticizing Shirley for
being “indolent,” suggesting that if she would just pick up pen and paper when
she has these experiences and record “the story that has been narrated, the
song that has been sung to her” (395), she might realize that “her dreams are
rare” and her “feelings peculiar.”
Charlotte says, “she does not know, has never known, and will die
without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in
her heart keeps it green.” (395) How sad! The narrator – once again speaking from a not-to-distant
future – is affirming that there is value in these kinds of experiences, and that
they would be worth recording; they might be of benefit to others—describing access
to states and experiences of transcendent realities of which we are capable of
having, simply because we are the human beings that we are. Such states and experiences provide
refreshments to the human spirit and nourishment for the soul, and to know that
they are possible allows us to be more open to them whenever they might transpire,
often spontaneously and without intent on our part.
In chapter XXIII - “An Evening Out,” Caroline is invited by
Hortense to visit her at the house where she and Robert live. Hoping Robert might be there, she goes, only
to find Robert not yet at home and Hortense enduring a visit by Mrs Yorke and
her children. One of the Yorke children
is said to start up “like some fairy” (404) from where she had been sitting by
her mother. The element of surprise in a
fairy appearance is suggested by this phrase.
Rose – another of the Miss Yorke’s – is sitting by a bookshelf,
reading. Caroline engages her, finding
she’s reading Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian. They discuss happiness, Rose averring that
she wants to travel and experience the world.
When Caroline asks Rose if she should be as happy as Rose
intimates if she were to take to “wandering alone in strange countries,”
(406) Rose replies:
"Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however, that I have an object in
view: but if you only went on and on, like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale,
you might be happier than now. In a
day’s wandering, you would pass many a hill, wood and watercourse, each
perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was overcast; as the
weather was wet or fair, dark or bright.” (407)
What Rose is describing here – and
what she may well be imagining without realizing it – is the Fairy World. The references to hill, wood and watercourse
stand out to me as fairy locales, and that they are “perpetually altering in
aspect,” while given a naturalistic reason, also suggests the Otherworld, in
which scenes are not always what they seem to mortal eyes, and where one can
pass from one locale or environment into another without much effort_ or even
intent!
In Chapter XXVII, Henry Sympson – a cousin of Shirley’s and
student of Louis Moore – Robert’s brother – finds a copy-book (such as students
used for their exams and etc.) that had been Shirley’s back in the day when she
was Louis’ student. Louis comes in, to
find his current and old student having taken the copy-book out and are looking
at it. His is surprised but not
angered. Shirley has to go and receive
guests. After she leaves, the
15-year-old Henry Sympson exclaims, of Shirley “Is she not a kind of white
witch?” (472) Witches and fairy are
often confuted in the lore; attributes of one also being used of the other. As Doreen Valiente once said in An ABC of
Witchcraft:
"The relationship between the world of witchcraft and the world
of Fairie has always been close; so close, indeed, that it is not easy to draw
a precise boundary in these enchanted lands, and to say where one world ends
and another begins.” (118, 1973, 2022)[4]
In the next chapter – Chapter XXVII, The First Blue Stocking –
after an altercation between herself and her uncle Mr Sympson over whom Shirley
was going to marry; a theme very much on Mr Sympson’s mind – we come to the
second great mythic story from Shirley!
She comes to visit Louis’ in his room after he had been ill with a
fever. Earlier she had brought him
grapes for his refreshment, which he refused, after which she offered to read
to him, which Louis also declined. After
his nearly full recovery, Louis sends for Shirley, and when she comes to his study,
he calls in the favor of her reading to him.
They read together from the works of St. Pièrre [i.e.,
Jacques-Henri-Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814); French writer and
botanist], Louis tutoring Shirley on her pronunciation and accent once again, as
in her student days, until she is reading fluently. After this, Louis asks her if she still
remembered a composition from her school days: La Première Savante “The
First Scholar”, which Louis calls a “devoir;” an expression of
respect toward something or someone.
Shirley deflects that she cannot remember it, to which Louis avers that he
can, word for word. Shirley challenges
him to do so, which he does, from memory!
The story begins with a quote from Genesis which tells how the
Sons of God saw the daughters of men and took them as their wives.
(6:1-4). It focuses on a woman – bereft
of parents and living from hand-to-mouth – who has a divine encounter in the
wilds. The setting imagined is one akin
to that in which biblical prophets were later to encounter the Divine Mystery,
as well as scenes in which fairy might well presence to mortals: “A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak roots,
turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick weaved, wove a canopy.”
(489) Again, the Oak is a fairy tree. Roots reach down into the earth and by them Pagan
mystics can communicate with the underground realm where the fairy live, beyond
the sídhe. The boughs of the tree over-cover her,
giving her protection from the sun and weathers.
As the girl sat in this place, the text says
her body was “still,” yet her soul was “astir.”
She experienced herself as “the centre” and in this state she debates
her fate; whether she shall live or perish.
She is ‘centered,’ in western mystical terminology, and thus
focused. This is how you might describe –
and experience – a meditative state of Solitude. As she considers which fate is to be hers, a
small “atom” or “spark” of life seems to be emitted, inadvertently, from “the
great creative source,” (490); a mystical name for the Divine—and in that
presence she beseeches whomever or whatever will listen for “Guidance – help –
comfort” (490) and bids it “come!” She
kneels and waits. And then:
“At last, one over-stretched chord of her agony slacked: she
thought Something above relented: she felt as if Something far round drew
nigher; she heard as if Silence spoke. There was no language, no word, only a
tone.” (490)
That “her agony slacked” would signify
a physical response to being meditatively centered. A person oft lets-go of stress in the opening
phase of meditation, and once stilled, presence may come to presence in or
around the meditator. Here, “Something
above relented.” That is, the
Transcendent Whatever – by whichever strange name you wish to call it – opened
toward the penitent petitioner, and then came near. An awe-inspiring experience! Whatever Shirley heard she experiences as if
Silence itself was speaking to her; yet – as in most mystical experience – the
communique comes in no known words, no language or even comprehensible music.
Out of this Silence, she heard a name, Eva, and accepted it as
her own. She pledges herself to this
presence as a “handmaid,” the presence offering her a “living draught from
heaven.” After she drinks, the presence
addressing her identifies itself as “a Son of God” (491). It tells her ‘he’ is a seraph – a celestial
being having three wings; one of a class of angels – and she willing offers
herself to be his bride; thus dramatizing an instance of the statement in
Genesis that the Sons of God took the daughters of men as their wives. The Son of God – the Seraph – then takes the
name of Genius, and in the following paragraphs of the story they live together
through Eva’s life-times, struggling against temptation and the Father of Lies,
who sought to come between Genius and Eva. Eva is equated with Humanity itself. The story ends with the Seraph being a
defender of Humanity (492).
Once again, as in the story of the Yorke family, the text
telescopes the narrative into the future, this time, that of the future of humanity
itself, when all will be reconciled to the Divine Other – called Jehovah, here
– and all beings will be transposed into Immortality and Eternity. Though an apocalyptic story using the Genesis
text as a touchstone or rune, this tale also has fairy-like elements, though its
vocabulary and narrative style are more evocative of 19th century
esoterica. I hear in it resonances of
tales in which a mortal – man or woman – is companioned by a fairy
mentor through their life and beyond – into the Otherworld; where time vanishes
or at least runs in unusual ways; at least compared to time in our mortal
world.
The next two references to fairy have to do with Martin Yorke;
one of the Yorke children – brother of Rose – his reading of a Fairy book out
in the woods, and the effect this has on him and his experience in our actual
world. Martin’s character is
anti-poetic; even hostile to poetics—he “tramples on the name of poetry” (570)
yet: “Here he is, wandering alone, waiting duteously on Nature, while she
unfolds a page of stern, of silent, and of solemn poetry beneath his attentive
gaze.” (570) He is seated in this
natural locale, the beauty and life of which he can hardly appreciate, reading
“a contraband volume of Fairy tales” (571).
Why contraband? Probably because
his parents would not want him to be reading it? Perhaps because he is drawn to something he
is sure they would not understand_ or his reasons for doing so? For whatever reason, he has to leave his
home, even on this cold wintry day, and read in solitude in the woods! The moon “waits on him,” the moonlight –
referred to as feminine – filling the natural scene around him.
It is winter, and he is surely cold, but he has found in this
retreat from his family a respite for his soul and spirit; both of which he may
well be unconscious? Yet, in “her” light
he reads two tales, being led into an imaginary dreamland of fairy. In the first he sees “a green-robed lady”
riding forth through the mist, in a bright vision! She enchants him and he knows he must follow
her into the fairy otherworld![5] I
wonder about Martin’s family life; as I do about all of the Yorke children –
given their seemingly urgent desire to leave home and be away from their
parents. Rose, in the chapter where
Caroline encounters her during a visit to Hortense, is talking of wandering and
seeing the world, and reading a Gothic novel – The Italian. Martin is early-on portrayed as a young
misogynist; distrustful and even hateful of women. He escapes into fairy-imaginings rather than
in the desire to wander the world; a different form of wandering. An analysis of the Yorke family and the fate
of their children – which Charlotte presents in a telescoping of their story
over the years after this novel is finished – might well be an interesting
investigation of family dynamics and socialization. (Perhaps I will attempt it
in a later blog).
The second fairy tale takes him to a seashore, where a strong
tide rages and rain blows in a storm. A
wanderer is out on a black, rocky reef, lonesome and cautiously looking down
into a deep well of brine, wherein they see vegetation larger than what grows
on land and then—
“Looking up, and forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the
reef, a tall, pale thing—shaped like a man, but made of spray – transparent,
tremulous, awful: it stands alone … a crowd of foam-women – a band of white
evanescent Nereides.” (571)
Nereides are nymphs who travelled in
Poseidon’s realm in Greek myth and could be friendly guides to sailors as well
as to others on the shores of wide waters.
This vision is brought to a quick close when Martin hears
footfall in the leaf-litter near him! He
shuts the book and awaits the realization of what might well be a fairy vision
in mortal timespace! The narrator describes the vision thus:
“She is a lady dressed in dark silk, a veil covering her
face. Martin never met a lady in this
wood before – nor any female, save, now and then, a village girl come to gather
nuts. To-night, the apparition does not
displease him. He observes, as she
approaches, that she is neither old nor plain, but, on the contrary, very
youthful and, that he now recognizes her for one whom he has often willfully
pronounced ugly, he would deem that he discovered traits of beauty behind the
thin gauze of that veil.” (572)
The ‘fairy lady’ turns out to be
Caroline Helstone, and this sequence of scenes is interesting for two reasons
(and no doubt more). First, for the way
in which the fairy-tale-induced imaginings that put Martin in such a ‘trance’
or ‘enchantment’ that when a person in this world – not fairyland –
actually approaches his embodied self, he thinks he is seeing a fairy. Indeed, when I first read this passage, I
thought that was what was actually happening, until the lady was identified as
Caroline! Martin Yorke, who thinks of
women as “proud monkeys” (572), was prepared to encounter one the fairies about
whom he had been reading, and, I thought, perhaps one of those who used to be
seen in the Hollow (as per Shirley’s remark earlier in the book, and the
narrator’s housekeeper on the last page of the novel). Second, it adds heft to the association of
Caroline with the fairy-folk.
In Chapter XXXIV (“Case of Domestic Persecution – Remarkable
Instance of Pious Perseverance in the Discharge of Religious Duties”) Martin is
spending his Saturday reading his book of fairy legends. He is “in the wood with his book … and that
other unwritten book of the imagination.” (590)
This “unwritten book” is the potential store of what the mind generates
in response to our experiences, desires, hopes and fears, joys and abuses that we
have endured. It is a ‘book,’ I
understand from the text, that Martin engages with though he has not
operationalized its presentiments. He is
clearly able to imagine fairyland and can see – through that enchantment –
another dimension of reality; one other than the actual world in which he is
living—yet the Fairy book is more an escape that a provender of
self-understanding or a touchstone of inspirations through which he might
someday be self-liberated from his familial and social situation.
Martin is said to have “an irreligious reluctance” to see
Saturday end and Sunday commence, as the narrator explains:
“Martin … disliked Sunday, because the morning service was long
and the sermon usually little to his taste: this Saturday afternoon, however,
his woodland musings disclosed to him a new-found charm in the coming day.”
(591)
Notice that it is his ‘musings’ are
inspired by the woodland, and gathered from reading the Fairy book, giving rise
to this ‘charm.’ He is in part ‘charmed’
in realizing that Caroline Helstone – the woman he had met in the woods – would
be there. This can be understood as
Martin being enchanted in a fairy sense, especially as it is in relation to
Caroline, who has been identified with fairies. One possible interpretation is that Caroline
has enchanted him; and this may be to the point—Martin has had so many
imaginings of the fairy and their world that he is seeing this actual lady in
his social world as having some effect of the fairyfolk about her. It might also be read as saying Martin has
been enchanted by his fairy stories, transferring that fairy-consciousness –
though imperfectly – into the actual lived-in world of our mortal
being-in-becoming. And as such he is ‘charmed with’ Caroline. Either way you read it, fairy-influence is potentially
implied.
In the penultimate chapter (XXXVI, “Written in the
Schoolroom”), wherein Louis and Shirley resolve their differences, Louis
asserts that Shirley has bewitched him, “in spite of sense and experience, and
difference of station and estate,” lending further heft to Shirley’s
relatedness to fairy and reinforcing Henry’s exclamation that she is a
“white-witch.” Louis is a tutor. Shirley, “the Lord of Briarfield Manor” and
the “heiress of Fieldhead;” she is landed and wealthy. While this would seem to imply – according to
social conventions of the time – that Shirley is ‘above’ Louis in social rank,
her position with regard to him as a former student, may be said to even-out
their relationship to a degree.
I get the impression from what I've read that much has
been made of Shirley’s desire to marry someone whom she does not need to be
‘master’ of, but wants a partner in marriage who will ‘master’ her. While this might sound like she wants to retreat
into a more conventional ‘female role’ once married, the ‘mastery’ she seeks is
not one of patriarchal masculine authority ‘over her,’ but the mastery of a
teacher, who can help her to mature into wisdom. Louis’ engagement with Shirley is not one in which he is going
to take control of her as a ‘male superior,’ but as one actually in awe of
her. As they spar in this chapter, Louis
calls her “my leopardess,” (629) and later refers to her, in his notebook –
which the reader is reading – exclaiming:
"Pantheress! – beautiful forest born! – wily, tameless,
peerless nature! She gnaws her chain: I
see the white teeth working at the steel!
She has dreams of her wild woods, and pinings after virgin freedom.”
(635)
Both leopards and panthers and night
creatures, and thus associated with the Divine as Goddess. I am also reminded in this passage how the
fairyfolk are sometimes thought of as shape-shifters, and also that they may
sometimes have animal avatars; appearing in this animal form to ordinary
mortals! Louis, here, might be seeing her
more mysterious form? In the reference
to her being “forest born” – which we do not know she wasn’t? – we have a term
that identifies her with the fairyfolk, who are always born in the wildwoods
and fields of Nature. The “dreams of her
wild woods” reference again her origin in Nature, and “virgin freedom” may be
interpreted not as a woman’s life before marriage in a patriarchal society, but
rather of her being ‘Virgin’ in a Pagan sense; she is a woman in control of her
own sexuality, sexual pursuits and in the choice of partners. This exemplifies Shirley throughout the
story, in (1) her criticism of marriage, (2) her desire to make sure she
chooses the right partner for marriage, and (3) her rejection of her uncle’s
attempts to get her married in more conventional terms (with a man of her own
class, etc). All this points to customs
characteristic of the fairyfolk and the freedom of fairy women in their own
society to choose their mates as well as being chosen by them.
After this, in the ultimate chapter (XXXVII -- The Winding Up)
we come to the last reference to the fairyfolk, on the last page, where the
narrator’s housekeeper relates the story of her mother encountering the
“fairish” (652; see my discussion at the end of my previous blog, Shirley II)
in the Hollow before the mill was built.
The implication of all these references to fairy in the novel justifies
Martha’s suggestion that the encounter had by her mother was probably the last
one; no more have the fairy been seen on this side of the sídhe – though
they have been “heard” over the intervening decades. To me, all of these fairy indications and
references to fairy legends in the novel; the culmination of which may well include
Shirley’s story of Eva and Genius – are what have been “heard” of them; and
that the fairy may yet be presencing in and through the experiences of such living
mortals and the intimations of their creative imaginations.
On one level, Shirley is a social novel; not totally
unlike others of its genre in the 19th century. The story deals with characters in their
day-to-day lives, living-out ordinary mortal aspirations, difficulties,
frustrations, injuries and sorrows, et cetera. Yet, out of the ordinary arises the
extra-ordinary; and in this novel, the fairy elements represent that
extra-ordinary consciousness; which may remind us that there is Another World,
other than the simply ordinary lived-in worlds we normally inhabit, and that
being in-touch with that Otherworld – whatever we may call it and however we
may understand it—can be a touchstone of a liberating and liberated
consciousness, if it is not simply used as a placebo; a temporary escape from
our ordinary circumstances, however sustaining or oppressive, satisfying or
abusive.
An imagined Otherworld can be a guide to self-realization and
full-fill-ment, but in Shirley it does not function in this way. The fairy element in this novel serves as a
reminder – to the reader if not to the characters – that more is possible in
life than is dictated by the structures and strictures of our sociocultural and
psychological realities. The characters
rarely act in such a way as would allow them to accept that the inspirations
and insights that are possible to be derived from that Otherworld may be
realized in their own situations. And in
this fact can be found the reason why the story ends the way it does, with
Robert’s dream for Briarfield turning it into yet another industrialized
mill-town with polluted air and water, with paved roads and “a mighty mill, and
a chimney “ambitious as the Tower of Babel.” (652), where the green and greening
effect of Nature has been overrun and closed out—but not forgotten.
[3]
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi – “Thus passes the glory of the world.”
