“The whole last chapter seems very perfunctory, and the happy ending raises some very complex questions.” (77)
- Judith Williams Perception and Expression in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë (1988)
“There is a weaving in and out, then the dance resolves correctly: Moore and Caroline pair, and Shirley and Louis; the sexual balance is then appropriate and around them the problems of society also start to resolve: the Orders in Council are repealed, trade resumes, employment picks up again.” (180)
- Elizabeth Imlay Charlotte Brontë and the Mysteries of Love: Myth and Allegory in Jane Eyre (1989)
I have to admit that I read Shirley with certain expectations. First, I was probably expecting a novel similar to Jane Eyre, perhaps because of my long fascination of that story, augmented recently by the Imlay’s analysis of it, in which she shows that there are initiatory themes operating with regard to Jane and Rochester, mythic themes and references that enhance and deepen the reader’s understanding of the narrative, as well as a theme of self-realization being brought about through pursuance of an esoteric ritual related to the seasons and perhaps grounded in Masonic beliefs and lore. I approached Shirley – and will soon be re-reading Villette – with Imlay’s analysis guiding and inspiring me. I followed the narrative carefully, marking any passage or word which was related to those mythic and mystical themes Imlay had demonstrated were present in Jane Eyre and which were, she intimated, also embedded in Charlotte Brontë’s last two novels. These themes include references to the Moon and to Nature (with a capital ‘N’), goddesses and the fairyfolk, all of which colour and deepen the story being unfolded in Shirley, acting as signposts to a potential mythic-mystical interpretation of the novel.
However, long before I had reached the end of the story, I knew that the ways in which these themes functioned in Shirley differed from how they had been at work in Jane Eyre. After reading the final chapter, I wrote this ‘reaction entry’ in my journal:
“Last night I finished the novel, and am both perplexed and unfulfilled in my expectations; sadly disappointed would not be a term far from correct for how I felt after reading the last chapter. The two penultimate chapters were somewhat longish, drawn-out dramas in which, first, Louis maneuvered himself into a place where he could profess his love for Shirley, and in the second, Robert does essentially the same thing with Caroline. At the end of the Louis and Shirley chapter, they have agreed to be married, though the details are not set. At the end of the Robert and Caroline chapter, they have not come to an agreement to be married. So, I expected a chapter – at least one – in which Robert and Shirley would also come to some understanding, and in the end be married.
“What I got was a chapter in which Charlotte basically decided to give up the narrative and tell us what happened_ telescoping (again, as in the chapter where she looked into the future of the Yorke children and presented their fates) in order to give us a picture of (1) the fates of the three curates and then (2) the marriages of Louis and Shirley and of Robert and Caroline, and finally (3) a dour picture of what the future of Briarfield would look like.”
Expectations were undermined. The mystical-mythic reading I was hoping for and expecting to experience became what seemed a lost cause.
When engaging with a text – whether a novel, a movie or a song (three among so many kinds of texts) – and we find our expectations thwarted, the problem is not usually with the text but with the assumptions we had which gave rise to erroneous expectations. Expectations do not determine what a text will give us, and if the text is worth engaging with, it is worth a re-engagement, with our expectations stripped away. We should remove the expectations like a pair of faulty glasses, as if saying “that was the wrong prescription for seeing this text!” – and engage with the text to see what it might actually be doing. We might find something in the text worth considering, embracing, even exulting over—finding in it touchstones and runes for wisening in the course of our brief lives.
And so I went back to the last chapter, with the goggles of my own expectations removed, and read it again_ and again_ until I saw what Charlotte Brontë might have been doing with this chapter that Williamson had referred to (see the first epigraph above) as “perfunctory.” Did Charlotte really just ‘give up’ on the narrative, as it first seemed to me? _As some readers have lamented? I wanted more. I expected at least a chapter in which Robert and Caroline sealed their intention to marry, and perhaps another in which some of the character arcs – even of a few of the secondary characters, whose fates I was intrigued to know something about – might be described, at least in brief.
But this didn’t happen. And as I see, now, this is not what the text is doing.
What I now think the author gave us – after a closer reading, with eyes opened to its inherent possibilities – and I am not claiming this is the only way to see it! – is a very mixed ‘happy ending;’ a completion and then an unravelling – of certain narrative threads that sum-up the journey of the whole story for the reader.
The chapter starts – as does the novel – with the three curates. Chapter I presented them in all their bravado, selfishness and self-indulgence. Inexperienced, as yet, and self-willed. Here, at the end, Malone is said to have undergone a catastrophe in his life, which the author refuses to give the reader an account of, leaving us only guessing! Sweeting married and came into a “comfortable living,” living “long and happily.” Donne turned out better than the reader might expect. To begin this last chapter with an account of the curates, would seem to parallel Charlotte’s beginning the novel with them. This might be considered a soft ‘structural’ feature that ‘brackets’ the story in a way; like another one regarding the fairies and the Hollow, before the mill was built; which I will mention at the end of this blog, and again in the next one, on the role of fairies in Shirley.
Charlotte then gives a brief account of how the political and economic world has changed by the time of this last chapter; which is set in 1812. The Napoleonic Wars – which created the economic hardships that background the narrative – are thought to be over. A new era of prosperity is intimated and expected. The chapter then deals with the preparation for the marriage of Louis Moore and Shirley Keeldar. Their relationship is described as ‘difficult,’ as Shirley had put off their marriage time and time again, finally relenting. Caroline – who helped Shirley prepare for her wedding – says of her to Robert that she is “as naughty as ever.” (645),[1] to which Robert affirms that Louis “likes her all the better for these freaks,” though she “tires him.” Here we see some resolution of their narrative following up on Louis’ proposal to her and her acceptance in the earlier chapter.
Much to my surprise, on a more engaging read, I saw that the resolution of Robert and Caroline’s tete-a-tete with regard to whether they were going to be married or not is described in this chapter, unfolding over several pages!
After Caroline comes back to the rectory from Fieldhead, where she was assisting Shirley in getting ready for her wedding, Caroline is shown watering her flowers and other plants. There is a conspicuous reference to a “rose-tree” as the last flower being watered, which, it is said, “Bloomed in a quiet green nook at the back of the house.” (644). How symbolic this is! Is not Caroline like a ‘last flower to be watered’ in this narrative? Louis and Shirley are already set to be married. She lives in a quiet place – the Rectory – with her uncle and now with her mother as well, in what could be understood as a ‘corner’ or ‘nook’ of the world. She is portrayed as sometimes being ‘invisible’ to the outside world; as such, could you say? she is _dwelling in her own version of the “quiet green nook at the back of the house.”
Caroline stands up on a broken “monkish relic” to get a better view of the surrounding countryside. Could her getting up upon this relic – “once, perhaps, the base of a cross” – stand for her seeking a perspective above what she is familiar with; traditional religion; traditional societal norms—searching out some intimation of self-transcendence? She seems to me engaged in an act of ‘far-seeing’ – looking away to ‘lonely fields;’ which could be interpreted as intimating a fairy place. The text describes what she sees and her experience of it:
“… she gazed over the wall, along some lonely fields; beyond these three dusk trees, rising side by side against the sky; beyond a solitary thorn, at the head of a solitary lane far off; she surveyed the dusk moors, where bonfires were kindling … above them, in the sky whence the sun had vanished, twinkled a silver point – the Star of Love.” (645)
To me the view that she gets has clear fairy aspects. The three trees could be understood as representing the triple gods or goddesses in fairy tradition; in such triples the Divine Other was often metaphored in Pagan cultures as well as in fairy lore. Lonesome fields, solitary lanes and a thorn tree are all associated with the fairyfolk. Places of solitude are often the locus of fairy-visitations; sighting a solitary lane from a distance might provide one with an apparition of the fairyfolk—walking – or more likely dancing – along the road, ready to dash into the woods on one side or another at the approach of mortals. The Thorn tree was sacred to the fairyfolk, along with the Oak, Ash and Holly.
The Star that she sees is Venus, which – when she feels someone circling her with one arm, thinking it to be her mother, she names, calling it “beautiful.” The one grasping her about the waist turns out to be Robert. That she is viewing Venus – star of the Goddess of Love – in the evening sky is significant as a dialogue then opens with Robert leading up to his proposal of marriage, and her acceptance. He confesses that he was going to leave England for America – and leave her behind – until news of the repeal of the Orders of Council reached him. Now, he says, he will stay. He intimates that the repeal means the potential for financial solvency for him and so he can now have a home and “seek a wife.” (647) Then follows Robert’s sincere plea for forgiveness for all that he has put Caroline through, during which she is likened to a rose, and him to a “hard, gray stone.” She gently accepts, each promising themselves to the other.
So, there was a resolution of the chapter in which they were dancing around the possibility of marrying, this passage revealing why Robert didn’t put the question of marriage to her with real resolve, as at that time he was planning to leave her, the mill and England behind. It is at this point, however, that the seemingly ‘happy ending’ to the story begins to break.
As Robert then explains to Caroline, he intends to make the village prosperous through his revived business at the mill. The Orders of Council, which had prevented trade with America, being lifted—would open markets that had been closed for a number of years. These events promised prosperity for Robert and others in industry, and because of this he intends to help his workers, paying them more, hoping this would enable them to live in decent houses. …
Caroline promptly asks him, “If you get rich, you will do good with your money, Robert?” To which he answers:
“I will do good; you shall tell me how: indeed. I have some schemes of my own, which you and I will talk about on our own hearth one day. I have seen the necessity of doing good: I have learned the downright folly of being selfish.” (649)
Two significant, applaudable points here. First that he is going to talk over his plans with Caroline, and second, that he has experienced a transfiguration in his being-in-becoming, resulting in an aspiration for doing good. Like Scrooge, in a way, but possibly not as powerfully narrated? Yet, there is dross in the visionary forge, though not ill-intentioned. Robert immediately ‘explains’ to Caroline – not in a ‘dialogue’ as he had just promised – what his intentions are, to which Caroline responds with a definite trepidation or dread of consequences. He intends to use his financial success to “line yonder barren Hollow with lines of cottages, and rows of cottage garden – ” (650) Caroline’s response is not supportive! She exclaims, “Robert! And root up the copse?” To this Robert enthusiastically predicts:
“The copse shall be firewood ere five years lapse: the beautiful wild ravine shall be a smooth descent; the green natural terrace shall be a paved street: there shall be cottages in the dark ravine, and cottages on the lonely slopes: the rough pebbled track shall be an even, firm, broad, black, sooty road, bedded with the cinders from my mill: and my mill – Caroline – my mill shall fill its present yard.” (650 - 1)
To which Caroline protests: “Horrible! You will change our blue hill-country air into the Stilbro’ smoke atmosphere,” and avers that she likes “the beck a thousand times better” than the envisioned transformation of Briarfield and the Hollow! Stilbro is an industrial town in the world of the novel known for its polluted air and water and the consequent bad health of its citizens.
What kind of world is Robert imagining? One, basically, out of alignment with Nature; one which overruns and excludes Nature. He refers to the beauty and greenness of the ravine and has no scruples about erasing what is there, turning it into a “smooth decent” and a “paved street.” The lonely, dark places – where fairy might have once lived – will be full of cottages. He is thinking as what we might call today a ‘developer of real estate!’ Forget Nature, such a perspective says, any natural place left undeveloped is wasted land. Yet, his intentions are at root ‘good.’ He assures her:
“Caroline, the houseless, the starving, the unemployed, shall come to Hollow’s Mill from far and near; and Joe Scott shall give them work, and Louis Moore, Esq., shall let them a tenement, and Mrs Gill shall mete them a portion till the first pay-day.” (651)
This is an exemplary resolve! At these words Caroline “smiled up in his face.” But does this intimate her being reconciled with his whole plan? While he is clearly intending to help the poor and unemployed, he is not thinking of Nature; not thinking responsibly about the human need for Nature and natural places. He is planning to cover over the natural beauty of the Hollow. So, while one can embrace and affirm his intended care for the poor and unemployed – among whom are those he was once too selfish to do much for during the War, given how it undermined business – he has a long way to go. The example of his helping William Farren earlier in the novel; a man dismissed from the mill three months prior, leaving him and his family impoverished and close to starving—get work as a gardener with Mr Yorke – is a positive example of what Robert was already capable of, and now intends to do more broadly. Yet here is where the idea of the ‘happy ending’ breaks down, I think, because of the way in which it unbalances the human world and Nature. The ending is somewhat bitter-sweet, therefore. There is no ‘happily ever after’ in any simple, naive sense, here.
While Robert has come a long way from where he was at the beginning of the novel, he still has a long and probably difficult road ahead of him; spiritually, emotionally, intellectually and in terms of the practical outworking of his intentions and aspirations. Does he ‘discuss’ his plans with Caroline? Not that we hear. Caroline is the reflector through which the reader hears the cry of Nature against brazen Development. She had just been surveying what could be understood as a fairy scene ‘over the wall’ – was she symbolically looking into the Otherworld? – and could now be said to be voicing a fairy melancholy over the loss of natural places in which to live; for the fairyfolk as well as for ourselves. Their beauty, and the resilience Nature inspires in the human soul, will be diminished if not eliminated if Robert gets his wish.
Robert is living in a pipe-dream romance of expected success, riches and the power to ‘do good for others’—this latter being something for which he has only recently recognized a potential. But he is not considering how this ‘power for good’ is to be wielded. Will it be enacted in cooperation with the people he is intending to help? Or will it be as a traditional ‘benefactor’ of the town? Will the increased prosperity allow for more than a mundanely materialist species of well-being? We all need to have the means to survive, but to live we need that ‘something more’ – which can partly be fulfilled by a connection with Nature.
I believe this mixed ending is no doubt intentional on Charlotte’s part. I think the last chapter – though it undermined my expectations and does not ‘act’ like the ending I was awaiting – tips the implications of the text toward a more Romanticist understanding of life and the world; one in which humans have to live more in concert with Nature; as we – and our cultures as well – are part of Nature; have arisen from Nature—and can be helpfully sustained by a communion with the natural world. The presence of Nature – with a capital ‘N’ – in the novel is also in harmony with an understanding of the fairyfolk, who – in folklore – are said to have long decried the usurpation of Nature by agricultural and industrial expansion and the pollution of air, water and earth consequent on that expansion.[2] A page later, after the description of the double wedding (Louis and Shirley; Robert and Caroline) in August 1812, the narrator laments:
“I suppose Robert Moore’s prophecies were, partially, at least, fulfilled. The other day I passed up the Hollow, which tradition says was once green, and lone, and wild; and there I saw the manufacturer’s day-dreams embodied, in substantial stone and brick and ashes – the cinder-black highway, the cottages, and the cottage gardens; there I saw a mighty mill, and a chimney, ambitious as the Tower of Babel.” (652)
What a revealing – and damning – description! Three terms for the what-it-was – green, lone, wild (fairy) – and three for what it became – stone, brick, ashes (industrialized) – and then three for the human infrastructure – cinder-black highway, cottages, gardens. These were the cottages Robert envisioned, and gardens amongst them, but in their midst was the new mill, no doubt filling the Hollow as he had predicted, with its ambitious chimney, likened to the Tower of Babel, the story of which, in the Bible (Genesis 11:1-9), is about human hubris, leading ultimately to a fall. This is not a positive description of the new mill!
The narrator then asks her housekeeper how she remembered the Hollow in days long gone by. And to my surprise, the novel ends with a fairy story! After saying that she could remember when the Hollow had neither mill nor cottages, and only the Manor House at Fieldhead two miles away, she relates a memory:
“I can tell, one summer evening, fifty years syne, my mother coming running in just at the edge of dark, almost fleyed out of her wits, saying, she had seen a fairish (fairy) in Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on this country side (though they’ve been heard within these forty years). A lonesome spot it was – and a bonnie spot – full of oak trees and nut trees. It is altered now.” (652)
This really resonated with me; especially having just been reading Silver’s Strange and Secret Peoples (1999)[3] twice this year (so far) and thinking about the theme she explores called “Farewell to the Fairies”—being stories of how the fairyfolk were said to be leaving England because of all of the pollution, irresponsible industry and aggressive agriculturalization of the countryside; its once pagan places being roped into the mechanistic, profit-driven world of the ever-sprawling cities. This passage, I think, speaks to that very theme!
Robert has undergone a degree of self-transformation in the course of the narrative; the turning point – his Valley of the Shadow of Death – being his being shot and nearly dying after his return to Briarfield. Yes, Robert does see the necessity of being ‘good’ by the last pages of the novel. He has earlier repented of his tactical and calculated ‘proposal’ to Shirley; in which he was rightly accused by her of wanting her as his wife in a kind of transactional exchange—for her money, not because he loved her. He has now recognized his soul-friend in Caroline and proposed marriage to her. He has acknowledged how he has hurt those who were once workers in his mill. He wants to change and do better; but what he does is so predictably typical for the time—to ‘develop the Hollow’ into a quasi-urban town, covering over, tearing up and leaving little trace of the wondrous natural environment in which an improved Briarfield and Hollow might otherwise have subsisted.
Reflecting on what Robert said at the end of the prediction of his intentions: “I will get an act for enclosing Nunnely Common, and parceling it out into farms.” (650 – 51) I feel very sad for the fate of this Common! Enclosure was one of the signature ills in England at that time, contributing to the ruin of the countryside; the rustic world in which fairies and people once lived in relative harmony. Enclosure meant the appropriation of formerly public lands for private use; fencing it in, so common people – and, by extension, the fairies – could no longer freely use it. If Robert’s plan included the Nunnwood – that remnant of an ancient wood, wherein stood the remains of an old nunnery – so much the worse! This wood was a potentially haunted place; a place where fairykind would likely have still resided. It was where Shirley and Caroline sojourned during one of their first ‘outings’ together; there they drew pictures of the ruins and the sylvan greenscape around them! How depressing to think of the Nunnwood as ‘developed’ and no longer haunted or even being a place for restorative solitude and resourcement! _Like so many such places, lost and never to be found again, on this side of the sídhe!
Caroline’s influence in the intended project would seem to not have had much effect, as the future shows Briarfield a modern ‘industrial’ town, ‘prosperous,’ perhaps, but without the soul of the land and the embrace of the Earth that nurtures deep human dwelling in Earth & Cosmos, sustaining and inspiring a more fully realized human existence. How sad that Louis, having taken over some of the responsibilities of being “Master of Fieldhead,” seems to have participated in – or at least not opposed – this usurpation of the land? It was only said that he was in attendance at the ceremony for dedicating the foundation stone for the new mill.
And has Caroline also been complicit? It may well be so, as no opposition from her to what has happened is evident further along in this last chapter! It seems significant that Caroline has no lines again after the above exchanges with Robert, in which she expressed opposition to her fiancée’s plan. She is simply referred to as one of the Moore “ladies” and as “Mrs Robert;” said to be quiet at the laying of the foundation stone for the new mill. Why was she “quieter-like” (than Mrs Louis; i.e., Shirley)? Did the proposed dialogue between Robert and Caroline about his plans break down? Never take place? Did he just go ahead with what he intended, without her being on-board with it? Did she acquiesce and give in to his will? (i.e., “She smiled up in his face,” p.651). We will never know. The text leaves us wondering about Caroline’s role in all this. Yet it does seem that both Shirley and Caroline have been somewhat reduced to the role of a “Mrs someone” in this penultimate paragraph.[4]
Given the ‘development’ of the Hollow and Briarfield, is it
any wonder the last fairish seen in the Hollow was fifty years ago! They may now be ‘heard,’ but are never
seen! What might this mean? _I hope to
address this in my next blog. Earlier in the novel there is a reference to
fairies haunting the Hollow. Robert and
Shirley are talking after an early visit he made to Fieldhead, during which Robert
professes his interest in night-walking (239).
Shirley then tells him how the fairies used to be seen there, and warns
him of another possible danger. This
earlier reference to fairies prefigures the one on the last page of the
novel. These – like the role of the
curates in the narrative – might be thought to ‘bracket’ the story, at least
from the point at which Shirley enters the novel. The role of the fairies in this novel will be
the subject of my third blog on Shirley.
[1] All quotes taken from Charlotte Brontë Shirley and The Professor (New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008; “Everyman’s Library” Edition)
[2] See my blog “My Trouble with Fairies” [1 April] where I discuss the theme of “Farewell to the Fairies’ in Carole Silver’s Strange and Secret Peoples (1999).
[3] Carole G Silver Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
[4] This reminds me of Jane Austen and her opinion that a woman’s story – of her self-determination – often ends with marriage, after which she becomes an appendage of her husband; which is why none of her novels ever followed the female protagonist much beyond their marriage.
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