n the world, her prestige, and her privileges as a
woman. What was worse, she lost her individuality, and became a mere
piece of furniture, of disused, old-fashioned furniture, in her father's
or her brother's house. If she had a father or a brother there was no
escape for her from dependence on the male; and if she had none, if
there was no male about the house, her case was the more pitiable. And
the traditions of her upbringing were such that the real, vital things,
the things that mattered, were never mentioned in her presence. Religion
was the solitary exception; and religion had the reality and vitality
taken out of it by its dissociation with the rest of life. A woman in
these horrible conditions was only half alive. She had no energies, no
passions, no enthusiasms. Convention drained her of her life-blood. What
was left to her had no outlet; pent up in her, it bred weak, anaemic
substitutes for its natural issue, sentimentalism for passion, and
sensibility for the nerves of vision. This only applies, of course, to
the average woman.

Charlotte Bronte was born with a horror of the world that had produced
this average woman, this creature of minute corruptions and hypocrisies.
She sent out _Jane Eyre_ to purify it with her passion. She sent out
_Shirley_ to destroy and rebuild it with her intellect. Little Jane was
a fiery portent. Shirley was a prophecy. She is modern to her
finger-tips, as modern as Meredith's great women: Diana, or Clara
Middleton, or Carinthia Jane. She was born fifty years before her time.

This is partly owing to her creator's prophetic insight, partly to her
sheer truth to life. For Shirley was to a large extent a portrait of
Emily Bronte who was born before her time.

It is Emily Bronte's spirit that burns in Shirley Keeldar; and it is the
spirit of Shirley Keeldar that gives life to the unwilling mass of this
vast novel. It is almost enough immortality for Shirley that she is the
only living and authentic portrait of Emily Bronte in her time.
Charlotte has given her the "wings that wealth can give", and they do
not matter. She has also given her the wings of Emily's adventurous
soul, the wealth of her inner life.

"A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins;
unmingled--untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency,
because by no human agency bestowed: the pure gift of God to His
creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her
experience of a