The novel may sound condescending and unkind to the working-classes by today's standards. This would have been acceptable in the Victorian era. However, even liberal journals considered the High Toryism in the novel too unrealistic.
Shirley was the sort of book that was reviewed and analysed by intellectual people, who are more likely to sympathise with more liberal causes and therefore criticise the book. Its political sympathisers would be less likely to sound out their approval in print.
Caroline thinks single women should be allowed to work. This was liberal for its time. However, Charlotte Brontë's friend, Mary Taylor, told her off for being too cowardly not to say that all women, single or married, should work.
For the film:
Director Displacement: A minor example. While Josephine Decker and Sarah Gubbins are credited as the respective director and writer at the bottom of the poster, the first name at the top is "Executive Producer Martin Scorsese," even though most people know it's not a Scorsese flick.
Hollywood Pudgy: There's a lot of emphasis on Shirley's self-consciousness about her weight; she struggles to fit into clothes and is repeatedly shown eating too much. She is played by the very thin Elisabeth Moss.
Notably, the Hymans had three children by the time Jackson wrote Hangsaman. The film implies that Jackson was struggling to write her first novel, while in real life, she had already published a novel prior to Hangsaman. The severe anxiety and depression that kept Jackson housebound did not manifest until the last years of her life. Rose and Fred have no real-life counterparts. And she never murdered any of her husband's students, although she did humorously fantasize about dropping some of them down a well.
The adult Hyman children were livid at the negative depiction of their parents. The Hymans had an extremely troubled, codependent, and complex marriage marred by Stanley's infidelity and Shirley's mental health struggles, but personally, they were very charming, intelligent, sociable, and hilarious people known for their wild house parties and their sprawling, messy homes full of books and cats. The film cranks up their worst qualities for dramatic effect while leaving out the more memorable aspects of their personalities.
