Ce mémoire examine les personnages, la métatextualité, et la "Woman Question" du roman Shirley de Charlotte Brontë en utilisant le dialectique Maître-Esclave du philosophe allemand Georg Hegel.
Charlotte Brontë's Shirley is analyzed by equating the characters' differing power balances as well as the novel's intertextuality and metatextuality through an interpretation employing the Hegelian Master-Slave Dialectic. The struggles of the rioting mill-workers are paralleled to the novel's middle-class women. The male characters effectively are placed in the Master/Lord status while the women are delegated the Slave/Bondsman role. In her identity's fluidity, Shirley Keeldar embodies the both Master and Slave spheres yet ultimately relinquishes her Master dominance upon her marriage to Louis Moore.