'Remote Must Be the Shores': Mary Taylor, Charlotte Bronte and the Colonial Experience (A GATHERING ON IMMIGRANT AND EMIGRANT Writers) (Critical Essay‪)‬

Charlotte Bronte's Shirley invites the reader to imagine that a magic mirror is held up, and describes the scene reflected in it: Bronte based the character of Rose Yorke on her friend Mary Taylor who emigrated to New Zealand in 1845. The Taylor family, who all feature in the book, exercised a form of privileged readership when Shirley appeared, evaluating the text with a literal and proprietorial stance. In their reading of it, it was a record and remembrance, to be corrected and commended in as much as it reflected their own often conflicting view of themselves. Letters between family members, and the heavily annotated copy of Shirley, now in the Turnbull Library, contain comments such as 'she had not drawn them strong enough', (2) 'the characters are all unfaithful', 'my father never talked broad Yorkshire', 'I have not seen that matted hall and painted parlour windows so plain these five years'. (3)