Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell is often seen as the most socially traditional of the major Victorian women authors. Unlike George Eliot, she had no extra-marital affairs, unlike the Brontes, her upbringing was fairly normal as was her subsequent social life, and unlike Austen or Oliphant she got married and stayed that way, contributing an income controlled by her husband, but not writing for subsistence. Gaskell's submissiveness seems indicated by the fact that she always called herself "Mrs. Gaskell" on her title pages.
Those who determine the contents of the Western Canon generally only grudgingly admitted Gaskell, and as the author of the gentle provincial novella Cranford. Seen through the prism of this work, she appeared uncontroversial, quaint, and a little irrelevant.
Recent criticism, fortunately, has been more discerning, and the public has been reminded of Gaskell's Unitarian upbringing, intellectual social circle (including the Carlyles, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Martineau, and others), and her other, more scandalous novels. Cranford, too, has undergone some revision in critical consciousness, as a work of greater complexity than initially acknowledged.
Gaskell was born in London in 1810; after her mother's death and her father's remarriage, she was raised by her aunt, later attending a progressive boarding school in Stratford-upon-Avon. Owing to the antipathy between Gaskell and her step-mother, the young writer spent little time with her father. After his death, she traveled in England, visiting a wide circle of friends. In 1832, Gaskell married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister, and embarked on a fairly traditional but affectionate relationship. As decorous young wives with time to spare were supposed to do, Gaskell practiced charity in Manchester, to which city she had moved with her husband. (The shock of the change from her relatively rural upbringing in Knutsford to the grimy modern Babylon of Manchester is reflected in her novel North and South). Unlike a decorous young wife, but very much like a reforming Unitarian, Gaskell took those experiences and eventually turned them into a novel of social consciousness, Mary Barton.
Mary Barton was published anonymously and at the suggestion of William, as therapy following the death of their only son. Although it was the fledgling effort of a neophyte writer, Mary Barton was radical in a number of ways. Primarily, of course, it was a critique of the capitalist system that foisted the bulk of the labor on the same workers who routinely starved (or "clemmed" in the Northern dialect that Gaskell reproduces) to death. Beyond that, however, it was unique in that all of its main characters are proletarians, and most of the main action - including the conclusion - is carried on by them (in contrast to Dickens's novel about Manchester industry, Hard Times, the plot of which revolves around middle class protagonists). Gaskell's portrait of the Manchester poor is realistic and avoids condescension (the besetting problem of Victorian novelists dealing with the second of the Two Nations, as Disraeli dubbed England's poor). Moreover, Gaskell's portrayal of the sexual temptation of the novel's independent working girl heroine suggested the potency of female sexual feelings and the autonomy that women have in determining their own fates - issues generally ignored or repressed by mainstream culture.
The book was hugely successful, and launched Gaskell's authorial career, although many objected to what they say as Gaskell's favoritism to the poor. Her writing was precisely to Charles DIckens's taste, at any rate, and he invited her to write for his journal, Household Words. Many of her major works came to be published via this magazine, but eventually, Dickens's use of his editorial pen on her works drove Gaskell elsewhere.
Ruth, Gaskell's next novel was even more controversial than her first, dealing as it did with a "fallen woman." To contemporary readers, the novel overcompensates for its heroine's sins by making her in all other respects angelically, even irritatingly good. However, addressing the subject of fallen women at all was incredibly courageous, especially for a woman writer. The book actually deals only slightly with sexuality; its radicalism lies in making the sinner the protagonist, and in having her "fall" occur at the opening of the book. Ruth, in other words, has a history after her downfall, in contradiction to the prejudices of polite society, which preferred its lapsed women to gracefully die or vanish after the deed. Ruth does, indeed, eventually die, but not before attaining a measure of respectability and stability and successfully raising the child of her liason.
From these modern, dramatic, urban works, Gaskell turned to Cranford, a portrait of the genteel members of a fading provincial town. Here she develops a lighter, humorous vein, which shows a kinship to Austen and Oliphant, and also to the sense of irrevocable change present in Eliot, and even more in Hardy.
Gaskell's fourth novel, North and South,
was also a social consciousness work, although less alarming than the first
two. Here she tries to present a more balanced picture of the perspectives
of the mill owners and the laborers in Manchester. She also creates
another strong heroine through which Gaskell represents her own variant of
female empowerment: strength through femininity. Margaret Hale's
self-control, imposing reserve, and belief in the powers and priviliges of her
own sex suggest one answer to the "Woman Question" of the day.
This particular form of emancipation resembles Tennyson's conflicting creation
in "The Princess." Like that later work, this construction of
femininity, while awesome, can lead as well to chaos and misunderstanding; a
difficulty that is only resolved by three deaths, one exile, and a bankruptcy.
Gaskell's last major novel is Wives and Daughters, and it carries on the gender concerns present in North and South. Here again she displays her kinship to both Eliot and Austen, focusing on the dizzying disempowerment of ordinary female lives, and the self-repression required by society. Many feel Wives and Daughters is Gaskell's finest work: complex, comprehensive, deeply felt, and memorably peopled.
Gaskell's success enabled her to move among the glitterati of her day, ultimately allowing her to befriend the hyper-reclusive Charlotte Bronte. In addition to providing the two women with the sympathetic support of a sister novelist, the friendship also led to Gaskell's writing her Life of Charlotte Bronte, still a key work for Bronte scholars and fans today, as well as being an important text within the genre of biography.
Gaskell continued to be a successful writer until her death (Wives and Daughters is in fact unfinished, but only just). Her earnings enabled her to buy a house, and she was able to successfully raise three daughters and enjoy a full social life. If she was not one of the most conventional novelists of her day, she was at any rate, one of the happiest.
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