Charlotte Brontë

Excerpt from Shirley: A Tale

Originally published in 1849

"Misery generates hate: these sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them: they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings."

A s the nineteenth century dawned, the Industrial Revolution, a period of growth and reliance on machinery to produce goods, was gaining momentum in England. Even in its infancy, the Industrial Revolution had begun to cause economic dislocation. Individuals who had woven or knitted cloth in their homes could not compete with the efficient new mechanized knitting machines (called frames) being installed in factories and textile mills.

At the same time, England was at war with France. The British government designed policies primarily to hurt France economically, not to benefit British citizens. As a result, many workers throughout England were unemployed. They were unable to buy food since unemployment insurance and welfare did not exist. Some of these former workers blamed the new knitting machines for their situation; they attacked factories, smashing the machines in retaliation. The workers were well organized—they sometimes issued warnings to owners whose mills were targeted—and determined to cut off what they saw as a threat to their livelihood.

These workers who destroyed the new machines became known as the Luddites, named after their leader (possibly a fictitious person) named "General" Nedd Ludd. In 1812, some Luddites attacked a factory owned by William Cartwright near the town of Huddersfield, England. With the help of a few soldiers, Cartwright defended the mill against 150 attackers. The incident was later described and incorporated into the novel Shirley: A Tale by Charlotte Brontë (1816–1854). An excerpt from this novel appears below.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from Shirley: A Tale:

• This excerpt is from a work of fiction, a novel. But in the early nineteenth century, contemporary fiction was the primary literary means of describing what was happening in everyday life. Historical novels sometimes can offer insights into the lives of normal people, as long as the reader does not regard each detail as literally true.
• Novelists like Charlotte Brontë had more than one goal in mind when writing their books. In part, they wanted to convey a sense of what life was like. Novelists also often expressed their own opinions about events through the dialogue among their characters. Using a novel to learn about history requires the reader to be able to distinguish fact from fiction.

What happened next …

The British government passed drastic legislation barring the destruction of factory equipment and several so-called Luddites were executed while others were deported to Australia. But strikes, and attacks on factories, continued from time to time despite ongoing government efforts to stop them.

Eventually, factory workers turned to other nonviolent techniques to assert their rights and protect their livelihoods—notably unions that negotiated for the rights of workers and political parties. This process took many years, even as industrialization spread to other countries besides England and similar conflicts between workers and factory owners broke out elsewhere.

Did you know …

• Charlotte Brontë, the author of this novel, was born in 1816, near the end of the period during which the Luddites were active.
• The novel from which this except was taken is titled Shirley: A Tale; Charlotte Brontë published it in 1849 under the pen name Currer Bell.

For More Information

Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley: A Tale. Originally published in 1849.

Clews, Roy. The Valiant and the Damned. New York: Dutton, 1976.

Liversidge, Douglas. The Luddites: Machine-Breakers of the Early Nineteenth Century. New York: Franklin Watts, 1972.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995.

Thomis, Malcolm I. The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.

Winnifrith, Tom. A New Life of Charlotte Brontë. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.