Elizabeth Gaskell

[Extollager]

If I were to think of a woman author who formerly was not "canonical" but now is -- or is close to becoming canonical, Elizabeth Gaskell might be my first example.

Her literary gifts are displayed in several forms:

Novel: Wives and Daughters
Novella: Cousin Phillis
Biographer: The Life of Charlotte Brontë
Ghost story: The Old Nurse's Tale

Her biography of the author of Jane Eyre may be the greatest achievement in Victorian literary biography.

These are all works that many readers will want, having read them, to reread.

Do students of literature encounter Gaskell as author of required texts in courses? Have you read her on your own? Have you enjoyed any of the television miniseries based (often, I think, quite closely) on her works?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Back in the long ago day when I was in school and reading required texts, women writers were under-represented to a ridiculous degree. So, no, I was never assigned anything by Elizabeth Gaskell. But I've read some of her work on my own. I liked Wives and Daughters very well (it was the miniseries that brought the book—and from there her other novels—to my attention) and I liked North and South even better. That one I read first and saw the miniseries later, and (unusually for me) was not at all disappointed. I tried Mary Barton but the heavy dialect put me off. It was just too much work. Cranford is amusing, but strikes me as more frivolous than Wives and Daughters, and neither of those comes close to the depth of North and South.

Before I saw Wives and Daughters I knew Mrs. Gaskell as a writer of ghost stories. "The Old Nurse's Tale" is one of her best.

 

[Extollager]

I read Mary Barton all the way back in 1976 as a required text in one of Don Reynolds's Victorian literature courses. It might be due for a rereading! It was already in the Penguin English Library series then.

As it is now, I often require Wives and Daughters in a British novel course.

 

[GOLLUM]

Hmm..I have a copy of North and South and know about Cranford but I've never even heard of Wives and Daughters. Another I may need to add to my collection this year.

Like Teresa I know Gaskell mainly though her Gothic tales and her iconic North and South for which I've seen a mini series but have not yet read the book. It sounds liike I should pick up my copy pronto.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I read lots I was never assigned - my favourite Elizabeth Gaskell was Ruth - it seemed so bold in comparison to other classical literature written by women.

Off the back of that I discovered Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Maria Edgeworth and Olive Schreiner/Ralph Iron. Apparently not all women writers were tame.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've never read anything by Aphra Behn, but I came across her when I was doing research on the 17th century. What an interesting life she had! The very opposite of the sedate Mrs. Gaskell.

Just to show how sedate Mrs. Gaskell was: in her biography of Charlotte Brontë she goes on at length defending Brontë against accusations of unwomanly "coarseness" in her work, at the same time acknowledging that there was some coarseness there to be found. She excuses this on the grounds of the life that Brontë led -- as the daughter of a clergyman in an out of the way parish, hardly a life of dissipation! -- which had caused the author to "touch pitch" but not be defiled by it.

Yet though proper and ladylike herself Gaskell greatly admired Brontë and her writing. Perhaps in the biography she was not only defending Brontë but also herself, in befriend an author and admiring a book (that would be Jane Eyre) which had been so criticized as "unchristian," connected with the "grosser and more animal portion of our nature," and even "subtly evil."

 

[Ray McCarthy]

BBC R4 had a program touring Gaskell's restored house and some of her diary excerpts, inc a passage about Charlotte hiding behind the curtains at one of Gaskell's "At Home" dos.

North & South is rather good.

If you like Gaskell, you might like Mrs Olliphant. There is "Hester" and also the Chronicles of Carlingford

Some of them are here
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/963

Many are out of print. Perhaps her attitude to the Church & Religion has made her less popular than she used to be, though BBC R4 rebroadcast dramatisation of Hester not long ago.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish are both fascinating 17th Century women.

Ruth was, for the time, a very gentle treatment of a single mother. (there were others I know but it was the first I'd read) The book itself contained an awful lot of difficulty and harshness but Ruth was allowed a certain amount of redemption and love (familial and from those she helps). Maybe it was just my age and the time I read it but to me Ruth was far more raw and edgy than Jane Eyre.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

maybe it was just my age and the time I read it but to me Ruth was far more raw and edgy than Jane Eyre.

I have always been surprised that Brontë's contemporaries found Jane Eyre so shocking (but a great deal of the negative comment came out after it was established that the author was female, and that explains it to some degree). One of the criticisms that was leveled at it was that it promoted social rebellion. I haven't read Ruth, but I feel that North and South was much more likely to do that than Jane, though Gaskell did do her best to show a balanced picture of the factory owner's viewpoint as well as the workers'. However Thornton (for all his faults) is a better man and better employer than most of the other factory owners, which Gaskell makes clear, so the book does tilt toward the plight of the workers.

Some 19th century (male) critics contended that a woman could not understand the problems of industrialization or the cotton industry. These things would be outside the normal sphere of a 19th century lady -- though 19th century men often wrote about things that were outside their own experience and direct observation, and no one criticized them for that -- but as for women, many of them worked in the mills and probably had as keen an understanding as anyone. But those women, of course, were not literate enough and did not have time to write books. But if they had, I imagine they would still have been accused of not knowing what they were talking about because of laboring under the double disadvantage of an inferior female mind and the lesser intelligence common among the lower classes.

Wives and Daughters would not, of course, excite the same sort of criticism, the subject matter being less controversial and more genteel, and focussing on a woman's place in society. No doubt critics were more willing to acknowledge her keen insights there.

Interest in Gaskell's work declined through the 19th century, and it is good to see that there has been a revival of interest in her works.

 

[Extollager]

Interest in Gaskell's work declined through the 19th century, and it is good to see that there has been a revival of interest in her works.

Early in the 20th century, Gaskell was very well represented in the Everyman's Library, which was widely distributed. I have what appears to be a 1927 issue of Austen's Emma that lists 806 volumes then available in what was intended to be a thousand-volume series. Gaskell is represented by

Cranford, #83
Life of Charlotte Bronte, #318
Sylvia's Lovers, #524
Mary Barton, #598
Cousin Phillis etc. #615
North and South, #680

Wives and Daughters might be absent because Gaskell didn't quite manage to finish it before her death, but my Penguin Classics edition helps one to see that this is not a great loss because so much was written & where the book was going is clear, etc. This is not an unfinished novel the way Edwin Drood (which is well worth reading) is. Ruth might be omitted because the heroine is, if I'm not mistaken, a reformed and former prostitute.

My main point is the fact that Gaskell has been widely available for many years. As for critical attention, I suppose that has lagged, although there was at least a chapter about her in one of David Cecil's books, I believe. Of course now she is a classic author.

 

[Extollager]

I have always been surprised that Brontë's contemporaries found Jane Eyre so shocking (but a great deal of the negative comment came out after it was established that the author was female....

...although I think at least one influential critic inferred that before it became known who wrote it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

...although I think at least one influential critic inferred that before it became known who wrote it.

There were several reviews before anyone knew the writer was a woman, and they were generally favorable. But the ones that were unfavorable at that point were, at least, honestly offended by the book itself. After it became known that the author was a woman there were more negative reviews than before.

But back to Gaskell, obviously the miniseries have made a huge difference in her visibility as a novelist. I wish there were more attention paid to her ghost stories, as well. A series of hour-length episodes based on those could be gorgeous and chilling if done right.

 

[Extollager]

I wish there were more attention paid to her ghost stories, as well. A series of hour-length episodes based on those could be gorgeous and chilling if done right.

"The Old Nurse's Tale" has been done a couple of times for radio, in 1943 (see #38)

http://www.old-time.com/otrlogs2/wc_fp.log.txt

and in 2011:

http://www.iancullen.com/actor.html

I've enjoyed some old-time radio quite a lot, settled down in a darkened room...

Gaskell on TV goes back a ways:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309121/

 

[AnyaKimlin]

If I remember rightly wasn't it the intended bigamy they were most offended by in Jane Eyre?

I haven't actually read North and South - so don't know it terrible well.

 

[GOLLUM]

But back to Gaskell, obviously the miniseries have made a huge difference in her visibility as a novelist. I wish there were more attention paid to her ghost stories, as well. A series of hour-length episodes based on those could be gorgeous and chilling if done right.

Oh Yes please!

I have coincidentally passed (and even picked up) a penguin edition of Gaskell's biography of Bronte but not yet been inclined enough to buy it. Is it something you think I would enjoy or is worth getting?

I think at the very least I'm going to have to mark North and South as a book to read for this year and might even revisit my collection of her Gothic tales.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If I remember rightly wasn't it the intended bigamy they were most offended by in Jane Eyre?

Actually, it seems to have been Jane's rebellious nature that disturbed many of them. And the idea that there was something wrong with the rich having so much and the poor having so little. Much more threatening to their way of life than the intended bigamy.

Thanks for the links, Extollager. I think "The Old Nurse's Tale" would be effective on the radio, but even more on TV (if done right, which is a big "if").

However, I suppose most modern viewers would find it tame, since they like plenty of blood spatter with their ghost stories. The story, of course, is more truly horrifying than that sort of exaggerated violence.

Gollum, I haven't read the whole of the biography. But certain excerpts turn up again and again in articles about Brontë.

 

[Extollager]

I have coincidentally passed (and even picked up) a penguin edition of Gaskell's biography of Bronte but not yet been inclined enough to buy it. Is it something you think I would enjoy or is worth getting?

I'm not sure enough of your reading tastes to say whether you'd love Gaskell's biography of Charlotte B. (and you weren't asking me), but I'll say that it's a book I've liked well enough to buy copies for giving away.

 

[GOLLUM]

I may take another look at the Bronte bio over the weekend.

Cheers.

 

[Extollager]

I found that I had some remarks on hand about one of Gaskell's lesser-known novels, Sylvia's Lovers (my, how connotations of words change). I think I might have saved them from a letter I wrote to someone.

Beware spoilers....

I'm about fifty pages from the end. This would be a good choice if you wanted to read something by a less grim Thomas Hardy. The second half especially brought Hardy's work to my mind -- although his first published novel, Desperate Remedies, didn't appear till 1871. But Gaskell's use of irony and coincidence -- not things I would have thought characteristic of her work -- suggests the later novelist; I wondered if he ever read this one.
Having just read one of MacDonald's novels (Alec Forbes of Howglen) I am struck by how much more interested in her characters Gaskell was. The combining of this kind of respect for them as persons with earnest morality is basic. The plotting is deft and there is real feeling in the descriptions. Incidentally her reference to the purple sky at Acre, in Palestine, reminded me of a Pre-Raphaelite-era painting or two from there -- not the dreamy Arthurian sort of thing, but meticulously rendered scenes, also of some watercolor work by Edward Lear.
There are numerous then-vs.-now passages that are always of interest. These are not just about changes of clothing, manners, notions about travel,* etc. (though she has these too, and they are interesting in their own right); she ponders how minds were different -- people were less self-conscious and analytical then than they are in the same area now, she says. She associates this with the ascendancy of a more conscientious and inward religion.

I've said little about the plot. It's to some extent about parents and children, but mostly about loves --
Sylvia Robson, a beautiful country girl, who is enamored of a chief harpooneer who (apparently) has been a bit of a womanizer, but did fall in love to the extent he was able, with her;
she's loved by Philip Robson, a hard-working, unromantic-seeming shop worker and then co-owner;
who is loved by another woman, Hester, though he doesn't know that, etc.
The background is the late eighteenth century with war with France, press-gangs capturing men by main force to serve as sailors, etc.
It's good! Think of it sometime if you want try try a Victorian novel by someone other than the most famous Victorian writers.
*One of the older characters says that when he was young, folks made their wills before venturing on a trip so far and to such a place as London.
19 Dec 2002

 

[Extollager]

Now reading North and South for the second time. Gaskell seems to me an outstanding Victorian "realist" novelist, but her imaginative gifts raise her book above merely documentary interest.