{"product_id":"9781605017082","title":"Shirley","description":" \u003cbr\u003eFollowing the tremendous popular success of \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre,\u003c\/i\u003e which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on \"something real and unromantic as Monday morning.\" Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, \u003ci\u003eShirley\u003c\/i\u003e (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre, Shirley\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates the full range of Brontë's literary talent. \u003ci\u003e\"Shirley\u003c\/i\u003e is a revolutionary novel,\" wrote Brontë biographer Lyndall Gordon. \u003ci\u003e\"Shirley\u003c\/i\u003e follows \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre\u003c\/i\u003e as a new exemplar—but so much a forerunner of the feminist of the later twentieth century that it is hard to believe in her actual existence in 1811-12. She is a theoretic possibility: what a woman might be if she combined independence and means of her own with intellect. Charlotte Brontë imagined a new form of power, equal to that of men, in a confident young woman [whose] extraordinary freedom has accustomed her to think for herself....Shirley [is] Brontë's most feminist novel.\"\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"MobileReference","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47138675654896,"sku":"9781605017082","price":0.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781605017082_p0.jpg?v=1763829078","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781605017082","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}