After a brief hiatus away from Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, I've picked it back up again. It's a slow starter, but the chapter I left off on actually gets more exciting, so I came back at a good time. It's set in early 1800s Yorkshire during a period of social unrest. Yorkshire must have been known for it's textile industry, and when machinery was introduced to the mills it caused an upheaval for those workers the machines would be replacing. In the novel Robert Moore is a Belgian-born, though half English, mill owner whose particular goal is to have a successful mill and restore his family's fortune. Caroline Helstone is his cousin and she is enamored with him (don't worry they are relatives through marriage, not blood), and I get the feeling that he would reciprocate were it not for his strong desire to concentrate on his business. I've yet to meet Shirley, but the story has gotten so good I don't mind the wait.
I came across a passage today in my reading that I had to share. Caroline is eighteen and lives with an uncle who is a clergyman. One afternoon as her uncle is entertaining some fellow clergymen, she's visited by neighbors, a mother and her three daughters. Although she would prefer to be left in solitude, she knows she must ask them all to stay for tea. I always love it when an author makes mention of needlework--something that might often be found in books from this period as it was a pastime many women (and girls) would undertake, whether they enjoyed it or not. I got a kick out of this scene:
"And now Caroline had to usher them upstairs, to help them to unshawl, smooth their hair, and make themselves smart; to reconduct them to the drawing-room, to distribute amongst them books of engravings, or odd things purchased from the Jew-basket. She was obliged to be a purchaser, though she was a slack contributor; and if she had possessed plenty of money, she would rather, when it was brought to the rectory - an awful incubus! - have purchased the whole stock than contributed a single pincushion."
"It ought to be explained in passing, for the benefit of those who are not au fait to the mysteries of the 'Jew-basket' and 'missionary basket,' that these meubles are willow repositories, of the capacity of a good-sized family clothes basket, dedicated to the purpose of conveying from house to house a monster collection of pincushions, needlebooks, cardracks, workbags, articles of infant wear, etc., etc., etc., made by the willing or reluctant hands of the Christian ladies of a parish, and sold perforce to the heathenish gentlemen thereof, at prices unblushingly exorbitant. The proceeds of such compulsory sales are applied to the conversion of the Jews, the seeking out of the ten missing tribes, or to the regeneration of the interesting coloured population of the globe. Each lady contributor takes it in her turn to keep the basket a month, to sew for it, and to foist its contents on a shrinking male public. An exciting time it is when that turn comes round. Some active-minded women, with a good trading spirit, like it, and enjoy exceedingly the fun of making hard-handed worsted-spinners cash up, to the tune of four or five hundred per cent above the cost price, for articles quite useless to them; other feebler souls object to it, and would rather see the prince of darkness himself at their door any morning than that phantom basket, brought with 'Mrs. Rouse's compliments; and please, ma'am, she says it's your turn now'."
I get the feeling that Caroline is of the 'reluctant' persuasion when it comes to making pincushions! Wasn't that great?! I still plan on reading Willa Cather, but I think I may have to finish Shirley first!