“You may search my countenance, but you cannot read it.”
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Work
Shirley
Its focus is less on individual men and women, although their stories add compulsive drama and tension, than on the individual perceived in close relation with the forces moulding society. Charlotte Brontë chose to set it during the Napoleonic Wars - a period of bad harvests, Luddite riots, economic unrest and the oppression of women - in order to grapple with social and political issues. In her story of two contrasting heroines and the men they love can be traced her wish to reconcile the world of romantic love and fulfilment with the gritty realities of suffering, obligation and social duty.
Quotes
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Charlotte Brontë
Canonical work source
“God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it....”
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“Painful indeed is the panegyric of those we contemn.”
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“Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god...”
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