The Education of Bronte's New Nouvelle Heloise in Shirley

Although most critics dismiss the numerous schoolroom scenes in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley as emblems of patriarchal oppression, in fact such scenes form part of the novel's complex discourse on education. Echoing Rousseau's New Heloise, with its eroticized relationship between tutor and pupil, Brontë links Shirley's attraction to her former tutor Louis Moore with the provisional freedom of a Rousseauean education. While the private Fieldhead schoolroom allows a brief rebellion against the social order, Shirley also finds herself enmeshed in the hierarchical social transactions of a coercive parish schoolroom, emphasizing her role as a public defender of church and state.