Shirley

Yes, reader, we must settle accounts now. I have only briefly to narrate the final fates of some of the personages whose acquaintance we have made in this narrative, and then you and I must shake hands, and for the present separate.

Mill distress, Caroline's silence, Shirley's inheritance, Luddite threat, and double marriage resolve into a Condition-of-England romance with accounted fates, so plot scores 88.

The hour was now that of dusk. A clear air favoured the kindling of the stars. "There will be just light enough to show me the way home," said Miss Keeldar, as she prepared to take leave of Caroline at the rectory garden door. "You must not go alone, Shirley; Fanny shall accompany you." "That she shall not. Of what need I be afraid in my own parish?"

Shirley and Caroline are sharply contrasted temperaments — heiress boldness against niece restraint — while Robert and Louis supply twin masculine poles, so cast scores 89.

Time wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England began to look pleasant: her fields grew green, her hills fresh, her gardens blooming; but at heart she was no better. Still her poor were wretched, still their employers were harassed.

Visiting and old-maid chapters dilate; war-harassed commerce and later riot nights supply propulsion — provincial tempo with industrial spikes — so pace scores 83.

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good.

Levitical irony and later Hollow elegy show Charlotte at panoramic social register — less fevered than Jane Eyre — so prose scores 90.

I can tell, one summer evening, fifty years syne, my mother coming running in just at the edge of dark, almost fleyed out of her wits, saying she had seen a fairish [fairy] in Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on this countryside.

Mill, Fieldhead, and the fairy-emptied Hollow map Luddite Yorkshire as both industrial stage and lost pastoral, so world scores 88.

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them.

Comic-documentary curate shower invites before the century winds back to war and mills — wit before crisis — so hook scores 87.

Commerce, in some of its branches, seemed threatened with paralysis, for the war continued; England's blood was shed and her wealth lavished.

Dual heroines and Luddite machine politics inside a marriage novel make Shirley Charlotte's Condition-of-England experiment, so innov scores 88.

The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity to offer directions. I only say, God speed him in the quest!

Couples settled, Hollow elegized, moral refused — complete but anti-climactic beside the mill crisis — so ending scores 85.