Charlotte Brontë's Shirley leads us back to the early nineteenth century, into the period of the Napoleonic wars and the Luddite riots. The novel represents not just the economical, social, political situation at the time but also draws a parallel between working class people and English middle class women. As a result of the wars, trade becomes totally impossible, workers simply cannot earn their living, they are locked up in these restricted social and economical positions like all the women in the rigid Victorian era. Thus, working class men become feminized, they experience the social claustrophobia that originates from the historical events. The text tries to find answers to questions like how a man and a woman can understand each other or how they can survive emotionally without a partner. Illness as such also gets a crucial role. I would like to focus on the relationships of the major characters, their Bildung and on psychosomatic illness that appears in the novel as a projection of repressed desires and as a means of development in personality