Anne Lister and Lesbian Desire in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley

Abstract

During the winter of 1838–39, Emily Brontë lived close to Shibden Hall, whose owner was Anne Lister. Lister’s diaries reveal numerous sexual and romantic relationships with women, including her ‘marriage’ to Ann Walker. While critics and historians have speculated about the connection between Anne Lister and Emily, no consideration has been given to the connection between Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Shirley, and Anne Lister’s life, despite obvious similarities and the likelihood that Charlotte knew of Lister. Like Shirley Keeldar, Lister was a Yorkshire landowner, who adopted a masculine persona and was attracted to a weaker, more feminine woman. But we do not suggest a crude cause-and-effect between Lister’s life and Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Instead, it is more appropriate to read Lister’s diaries as chronicling ideas and attitudes that were part of Charlotte’s world and which open up readings of Shirley which would, before the discovery of Lister’s diaries, be anachronistic. In this way, Lister’s text allows a more explicitly sexual interpretation of female relationships in Charlotte’s novel.