I feel like I have my work cut out for me with Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. I'm glad I waited until I had enough time to start reading (which I did last night finally) when I could read enough to get into the story, rather than reading a few pages and setting it aside again. Somehow Jane Eyre seems like a complete breeze of a book in comparison. I think Shirley is going to be slower going and I feel like I will need to pay closer attention to things to keep track of what's going on.
Twenty pages in and I can see Charlotte knew her Bible references very well. She refers to Bible passages and personages quite often as well as current events and people of the day and literary references. Some of it is over my head as I don't recognize many of the references. This is an Oxford University Press edition, however, and they are very generous with their explanatory notes. For example do you know what Rehoboam means? In this case it describes a particular kind of man's hat. Or did you know tenters are long wooden frames where cloth is stretched out to dry after milling? And I picked two of the easy ones. My only little quibble is that these unknown words and references are asterisked in the text. I then have to flip to the back and find the corresponding note, which is numbered, by the way. Life would be so much easier with regular footnotes on each page. I guess footnotes have been done away with in this day and age, which is a pity. If I happen to be sitting while I'm reading I can flip to the back (though it means loosing my place in the text and stopping the flow of the story), but if I happen to be walking on the treadmill, I just read for general content and only stop to look in the back when I am completely confused.
I've not yet met Shirley. So far the story opens with three unruly young parsons having an evening meal and a lively discussion when an older cleric comes knocking on their door asking for support (in the form of a pistol) from one of the young clergymen. He fears problems down at the mill. Charlotte Bronte inserts herself into the narrative when she gives the reader and idea of what to expect, which I really like.
"If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon that table shall be one that a Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week."
So I guess this means what I expected all along, a story with a slow start, but worth it if I just stick with it? I'm willing to eat the cold lentils and unleavened bread (in Charlotte's words) to get to the good stuff later.