Elizabeth Gaskell's Resurrection

Last week I read a marvelous paper in the latest Gaskell Society Journal entitled "Elizabeth Gaskell's Legacy from Romanticism," by John Beers. It provided yet more detailed examples on how Gaskell was a writer of the first order when it came to layering meaning upon meaning by showing her use of and illusion to the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Coleridge.

But, that's not what I want to write about today. What I want to write about today is a 2006 article in The Times OnLine that Beers refers to frequently in his paper--it is Heather Glen's article, Elizabeth Gaskell's resurrection.

Glen addresses head-on the issue that has been troubling me for some time now. Why did I never encounter Gaskell before a few years ago? Glen answers that Gaskell "was the victim of various kinds of condenscension" and was denigrated to secondary status by critics who never were able to see beyond her surface "sympathy."

The article is actually a review of a 10-volume complete works, edited by Joanne Shattock, et al. In the article, Glen shows the books as divided into two parts (five volumes in each part, and each part costing £450). I found a five-volume set on Amazon for $671--this looks to be one of the two parts, but the listing doesn't specify which parts are included.

This is all rather academic as I can't afford the set, partial though it is, and enticing as it is. This edition, according to Glen, provides the "first comprehensive critical and textual edition" of all Gaskell's known works and records "variants scrupulously" and contextualizes "the works it presents by providing explanatory footnotes and a clear account of the production and reception of each text." While I have been enjoying Uglow's bio of Gaskell immensely whilst reading Gaskell's works in order, it provides just a bit on the production and reception of the works, an area that I would love to explore further.

Glen then goes on to analyze the opening scene in Mary Barton in terms of her use of Wordworth's Lucy poem, the politics of 1847 and the implications buried in her use of specific words and phrases such as "republican" and "holiday." This is fascinating stuff!

Glen talks about Gaskell's "intelligent disinterestedness...that attentiveness and responsiveness to the multifacetedness of reality that Michael Wood has called 'the kindess of novels' and that Gaskell's contemporaries described, in a term too easily confused with sentimentalism, as 'sympathy.'"

This is one of the aspects that I love about Gaskell--her ability to see all sides of an argument, and respect the different points of view and the different paths that brought individuals to where they are in the story.

I especially appreciated Glen's discussion of Ruskin's Modern Painters III. Ever since I read in Uglow's bio that this was one of Gaskell's favorite books, I have wondered why she loved it so much. What did it say to her that resonated? According to Glen, Ruskin's theory on the "'mighty pictorial fusion' to be made out of the multifariousness of a faithfully registered reality" fascinated Gaskell, who strived to "write truthfully."

Finally, I cannot wait to reread Wives and Daughters, and enjoy for myself the "rhythmic repetition" and invocation of nursery rhyme in the novel's opening. This, according to Glen, demonstrates Gaskell's "artfulness of her seemingly artless method." In the end, I think that is why Gaskell was considered second rate for so long--she made it look too easy.

Pride and Prejudice vs. North and South: Why the Similarities

I posted on the similarities of plot lines here; the background on Gaskell and her reputation pre-N&S here; and similarities of language and characterization here.

Now I want to start addressing why N&S is so similar to P&P.

I don’t want to suggest that in N&S Gaskell simply retold or reshaped P&P into her own setting and time—fan fiction it is not. Margaret is not an Elizabeth, and Thornton is not a Darcy, though I do believe that the men are more similar as characters than Margaret is to Elizabeth, and while both authors deal with the notions of pride and prejudice extensively, they diverge significantly in other themes and tone and especially setting. Nor do I want to suggest that the strong parallels between N&S and P&P are coincidence or evidence that Austen simply modeled her story on an earlier archetypal story that Gaskell is also tapping into. I believe that Gaskell consciously used P&P as a model for N&S—the trick is that there is no hard evidence that she did so. Her daughters, like Cassandra Austen, burned much of her correspondence at her death. And while, many of her letters remain, many were destroyed. So, Austen’s influence on Gaskell can only be surmised.

I think that Gaskell consciously used the story arc of P&P for N&S because she desperately wanted to produce another significant novel (i.e., one that deals with a social problem) but that was also popular with the middle-class reading public and she was either coached by one or more of a handful of likely candidates or concluded on her own that P&P was an excellent model for her story and that invoking Austen was a sure fire way to appeal to the middle-class.

So let’s review Gaskell and her career as an author.

Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in 1810—her mother died when she was a year old and though her father remarried when she was four, she lived with a maternal aunt and was surrounded by her mother’s family in Warwick, near Stratford-on-Avon. Both her parents were Unitarians, and as such she was very well-educated and was brought up to be tolerant and rational. Her father, whom she visited occasionally, died when she was 19 and two years later she married Wm. Gaskell, a Unitarian minister whose parish was in Manchester. She was active in her husband’s parish as a teacher and was sympathetic to the plight of the workers. She was very much an Elizabeth Bennet type of person—pretty, vivacious, well-educated and articulate, charming, flirtatious, sympathetic, and had many friends from all walks of life. She loved gossip and was a born story-teller. She had four daughters who lived to adulthood; one and possibly two sons who died in infancy; and a still-born daughter.

At her husband’s suggestion and example, shortly after they were married, she began writing non-fiction, mostly travel pieces, and soon transitioned to short stories. In all, she wrote seven novels, a biography of Charlotte Bronte, several novellas, and over sixty short stories. She very much believed that she could help ease society’s ills through her writing, and her first two novels were, what is called, social-problem novels. The first, Mary Barton, was written to shed light on the plight of the working class and portray them as human beings with a sense of dignity, family loyalty, capable of deep love, and beloved of God. The second, Ruth, told the story of an unwed mother who was seduced and abandoned by a rich young man. Both Mary Barton and Ruth are very much parables in that their plots and characters are intended to provide a moral lesson. They were both highly controversial but ultimately successful and brought Gaskell notoriety as well as celebrity.

Friends and family as well as reviewers were deeply divided over these two books—some friends burned them; they were often banned, and many labeled them as indecent, unwomanly, and disloyal (i.e., that is, to her class and friends). They were also highly praised, not only for their literary value but for their message, their compassion, and the way they grappled with tough issues. Though she was proud of her work in Mary Barton and Ruth, Gaskell was devastated by the criticism. Shortly after Ruth, she wrote that she wanted to write something more popular and less controversial, though still with a purpose, in her next novel. I think the important thing to keep in mind with Gaskell is that she wanted her stories to help society—she also wanted people to like her.

Also inspiring her to move away from creating another strictly social-problem novel was the success she had with Cranford. While she was writing Ruth, Gaskell was also writing a series of pieces for Dickens’ magazine Household Words that were slices of life in a small rural village in the north of England. These were nostalgic, sentimental, and absolutely beloved. She published them in book form in the same year she published Ruth. John Forster, a literary critic and close friend of Gaskell and a fellow Unitarian whom I quoted earlier praising Austen, loved the Cranford stories, and said the “little book which collects them will be a ‘hit’ if there be any taste left for that kind of social painting.’ As Forster was a big fan of Austen, it is generally assumed that he was comparing Cranford to Austen here, with his reference to social painting. In fact, when I read the book I felt that I was back in Highbury and that Miss Bates would be great friends with the sisters Jenkins and the other Amazons that inhabit Cranford. Cranford definitely feels like the "Further Adventures of Highbury."

So, based primarily on the comedic plot outline (which is definitely not part of either Mary Barton or Ruth) and to a lesser degree the similarities in language, characterization, and some scenes, it seems that Gaskell used P&P as a way of approaching her story, N&S, and making it more generally appealing and less controversial than the earlier social problem novels. While Mary Barton and Ruth were ultimately successful, the controversy they aroused was uncomfortable. Knowing that Cranford, which was evocative of Austen in terms of rural village life, was well liked, it seems that Gaskell turned to Austen more directly in her next novel, N&S.

I’ve been wondering whether she did this on her own, or whether someone else suggested it. More on that next time I address this topic.

North and South vs. Hard Times, part 1

I haven't yet read Hard Times but it's coming up soon so I was particularly intrigued with the write up of this summer's Dickens Universe at UC/Santa Cruz in which the featured books were Hard Times and Mary Barton. I'm not sure why Mary Barton was chosen over North and South, but the review of the meeting at The Literature Compass Blog is very interesting, and this was my favorite part:

Tuesday morning’s lecture was delivered by Priti Joshi of the University of Puget Sound. With apologies to Helena Michie for not referring to “novels of poverty,” she explained that her title, “Synching Dickens with the Industrial Novel,” was derived from her recent foray into the technical revolution and the limitation of being able to “synch” her iPod to just one computer. The pressure to limit the ability to “synch” iPods, she explained, came from the music industry. With the ideas of “industry” and “pressure” in mind, why, she asked, did Dickens not write his industrial novel until 1854, after the popularity of such “social problem novels,” or “condition of England” novels, had passed? Disraeli, Kingsley, Eliot, Gaskell, Frances Trollope, and Charlotte Brontë had all written their social problem novels by 1849. In fact, Joshi argued, Hard Times marks the death of the industrial novel. And it is not a terribly good industrial novel at that. Dickens “addresses workers lopsidedly,” Joshi said. We learn nothing about the condition of Bounderby’s mill; in fact, the “fairy palaces” of the factories are merely a backdrop for the novel. But while Hard Times signals the death of the industrial novel, Gaskell’s North and South, which followed, is the culminating work of the genre.”

Judging from the rest of the review of the Dickens Universe, Dickensians are not all that appreciative of the surging tide of Gaskellians so it's nice to hear that North and South is recognized for the powerful work that it is. I can't wait to read Hard Times so that I can compare the two myself.

Sylvia's Lovers - Paragraph on Prayer and Narrator's Preaching

Despite Gaskell being a lifelong Unitarian and married to a Unitarian minister, her works are free from overt preaching. She really did let the story stand alone for what it was--whether an exposure of the plight of the working poor in Mary Barton or a sympathetic look at an unwed mother in Ruth, to note the two novels of hers that are the most starkly social-problem novels.

So, I really noticed a passage in Sylvia's Lovers where I think Gaskell, the author and Unitarian, takes over from the narrator and inserts her religious beliefs.

The passage is in Chapter 15, where Philip Henshaw is feeling that his prospects and chances of ultimately marrying Sylvia are looking up, despite Charley Kinraid ruining his time at the Corney's New Years Eve party:

So this night his prayers were more than the mere form that they had
been the night before; they were a vehement expression of gratitude to God for having, as it were, interfered on his behalf, to grant him the desire of his eyes and the lust of his heart. He was like too many of us, he did not place his future life in the hands of God, and only ask for grace to do His will in whatever circumstances might arise; but he yearned in that terrible way after a blessing which, when granted under such circumstances, too often turns out to be equivalent to a curse. And that spirit brings with it the material and earthly idea that all events that favour our wishes are answers to our prayer; and so they are in one sense, but they need prayer in a deeper and higher spirit to keep us from the temptation to evil which such events invariably bring with them.

Despite my general dislike of authors preaching via their novels, I rather like what Gaskell is saying about prayer here. I think the best bit I've read about prayer in a novel is from Chapter 48 of Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns. As Grandpa, aka E. Rucker Blakeslee says, "Jesus meant us to ast God to hep us stand the pain, not beg Him to take the pain away. We can ast for comfort and hope and patience and courage, and to be gracious when thangs ain't goin' our way, and we'll git what we ast for. They ain't no gar'ntee thet we ain't go'n have no troubles and ain't go'n die. But shore as frogs croak and cows bellow, God'll forgive us if'n we ast Him to."

I prefer characters to make these observations as Burns had Rucker do rather than as Gaskell let herself do via her narrator, but perhaps she didn't have a character whom she felt could communicate her feelings on prayer.

Austen's Influence on Gaskell: Background Thoughts

A few weeks ago, I posted about what I saw as the striking similarities between Pride and Prejudice and North and South.

Now, I'd like to back up and put N&S and Gaskell into context before thinking about why N&S might be modeled after P&P.

Austen’s reputation is currently at its high water mark. Scores of 21st century authors eagerly note Austen’s influence on their own work and not only have no problem in being compared to Austen, but clearly strive for that distinction.

But that was not always the case.

Austen died in 1817—as you know, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously, and Austen’s brother, Henry, introduced them with a 7-page biographical notice that emphasized the author’s piety and saintliness but not a lot more. In fact, there was not another bio of Austen until 1870, when her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, published A Memoir of Jane Austen. Austen’s novels were reissued starting in 1833 and have never been out of print since then, which indicates that they were regularly read.

Timothy Spurgin, professor of English at Lawrence University, in one of his two lectures on Austen in his Teaching Company course, The English Novel, states that Austen’s earliest admirers were other writers, including Sir Walter Scott, who wrote a review of Emma that she was very proud of. He says that by the time of her death, she enjoyed a modest fame, but was not regarded as major figure. He goes on to say, that her reputation throughout most of the 19th century is that of a cult writer, a writer’s writer, whose fans admired her masterly use of dialogue and dramatic scenes.

Apart from Scott her early fans included Richard Whately, a professor of political economy at Oxford, and later Archbishop of Dublin. In 1821, he reviewed Persuasion and Northanger Abbey and wrote:
"The moral lessons…of this lady's novels, though clearly and impressively conveyed, are not offensively put forward, but spring incidentally from the circumstances of the story; they are not forced upon the reader, but he is left to collect them (though without any difficulty) for himself: hers is that unpretending kind of instruction which is furnished by real life; and certainly no author has ever conformed more closely to real life, as well in the incidents, as in the characters and descriptions. Her fables appear to us to be, in their own way, nearly faultless ... the story proceeds without the aid of extraordinary accidents…We know not whether Miss Austen ever had access to the precepts of Aristotle; but there are few, if any, writers of fiction who have illustrated them more successfully."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, poet, historian and politician, wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, though he died before completing his masterpiece, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, which was published posthumously in 1861. In 1843 in an article entitled “The Diary and Letters of Mme. D'Arblay” published in the Edinburgh Review, Macaulay wrote that “Shakespeare has had neither equal or second. But among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all in a certain sense, common place, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.”

Two other individuals—John Forster and G.H. Lewes—both praised Austen highly during this time period.

John Forster was the publishing industry’s first literary agent and a well-known and influential theatre and literary reviewer. In his 1872 biography of Dickens, Forster recalls discussing Nicholas Nickleby with Dickens when it was in draft form and he says, "I told him, on reading the first dialogue of Mrs. Nickleby and Miss Knag, that he had been lately reading Miss Bates in Emma, but I found that he had not at this time made the acquaintance of that fine writer."

Forster goes on to compare Dickens’ characterization with Austen’s: "This [characterization], which must always be a novelist's highest achievement, was the art carried to exquisite perfection on a more limited stage by Miss Austen…"

George Henry Lewes was also an influential Victorian reviewer and critic who wrote articles on a number of topics including philosophy, literature, and theatre. Lewes was a huge fan of Austen and wrote of her frequently, praising her technique and lamenting her lack of popularity. To give you a flavor of Lewes’s praise of Austen, in 1859, in an article entitled “The Novels of Jane Austen,” which was published in Blackwood’s Magazine, he says that “For nearly half a century England has possessed an artist of the highest rank, whose works have been extensively circulated, whose merits have been keenly relished, and whose name is still unfamiliar in men’s mouths….Miss Austen, indeed, has taken her revenge with posterity. She will doubtless be read as long as English novels find readers…[she] has generally but an indifferent story to tell, but her art of telling it is incomparable.”

Gaskell herself in Mr. Harrison’s Confessions in 1851 refers to Austen. Here, Mr. Harrison describes his new lodgings as his mentor, Mr. Morgan, helps him get settled:
Mr. Morgan took the house and delighted in advising and settling all my affairs. I was partly indolent, and partly amused, and was altogether passive. The house he took for me was near his own: it had two sitting-rooms downstairs…The back room was my consulting-room ("the library," he advised me to call it), and he gave me a skull to put on the top of my bookcase, in which the medical books were all ranged on the conspicuous shelves; while Miss Austen, Dickens and Thackeray were, by Mr. Morgan himself, skilfully placed in a careless way, upside down or with their backs turned to the wall.

So, the stage is set for our discussion of Austen’s influence on Elizabeth Gaskell, though we are now seeing a renaissance of her popularity after a decline into almost complete obscurity, was one of the leading Victorian novelists of her day. As I’ve discussed, Austen’s novels were being reissued starting in 1833 and were popular enough to stay in print indefinitely. Literary critics were occasionally singing her praises as a portrait painter and an effective teller of moral tales. Her somewhat self-deprecating remark about her art being confined to painting on bits of ivory with a small brush is taken at face value by these critics and she is appreciated as an artist within those limitations.

So let’s dive N&S, and then come back to a more general discussion of Gaskell. Unlike Austen’s novels, N&S is not a comedy, though it does follow the classic comedic tradition in that in ends with the marriage of the hero and heroine, but it has few if any funny scenes or characters. Unlike any of Austen’s works, it is very topical to its time and portrays all levels of society, from the desperately poor and oppressed factory workers in the north of England to London’s high society. Unlike Austen’s work, it drips pathos and is devoid of irony. In a nutshell, the heroine, Margaret Hale, moves with her parents from the south of England to the city of Milton, which was Gaskell’s name for Manchester in this novel. Her father has given up his living because he has developed doubts regarding the infallibility of the Church of England—this part is a bit complicated, and I’m not going to go into how it all worked—but suffice it to say that the Hales leave their beloved rural home to live in a manufacturing town where they are not only complete outsiders but have no understanding of the issues that keep the factory workers and the mill owners at each others’ throats. Mr. Hale now earns his living by teaching, and one of his students is mill owner, John Thornton, a self-made man, a master, and a self-described “hard” man known for his stubbornness, his ruthlessness in business, and his integrity. In addition to getting to know the Thorntons and other mill owners, Margaret also becomes friends with a family whose father, Nicholas Higgins, is a union man who is instrumental in organizing strikes against the mills. Through Margaret, Thornton and Higgins first come to know each other and then to understand each other. From that understand, they learn to work together to meet their common objectives.

Austen's Influence on Gaskell: N&S parallels to P&P

Let me tell you about a love story between a woman and a man whose initial encounter was marred by prejudice, misunderstanding, and pride to such a degree that it was a very long road before they were able to finally come together in complete understanding and equality and shared passionate love.

When she first meets him, she is struck by his stern demeanor and although she acknowledges his power among men and his intelligence and good sense, she believes him to be a proud, disagreeable man and laughingly states that she could never consider him as a husband and mocks the idea that he would ever think of her as wife.

From his first meeting her, however, he is thrown off-guard by her openness—she looks directly at him, as if challenging him, and this is so provocative that he finds himself, in his own words, “bewitched” by her, though those in his immediate circle harbor a jealous dislike of her that they make no attempt to hide. The lady, however, is not only unconscious of the affect she has had on the man, but unwittingly reinforces his feelings by continuing to act in a very open, direct way with him, which causes him to believe that she is not only aware of his feelings but welcomes them.

Their relationship in the early stages of their acquaintance is characterized by verbal sparring, in which he says something that provokes her, and then he prods her to explain herself more fully, inevitably ending with them misunderstanding each other even more than when they began talking. In fact, the man accuses the lady of persisting in misunderstanding him.

This situation comes to a head when the man proposes to the lady. Unfortunately, the lady has recently heard information from a third party that prejudices her even further against the man, and she angrily refuses him and tells him that his proposal offends her. After he storms away, she realizes how deeply he must love her if he would ask her to marry him despite the certain objections of his nearest relations. She has vanity enough to be somewhat gratified that she has inspired such feelings in such a man but is not softened enough to perceive that she has any real affection for him. He is deeply hurt and frustrated by her refusal—he had found himself unusually tongue tied and inarticulate when he was expressing his feelings as he was overcome by the strength of his passion for her, and he is ashamed of having let her cause him to lose his temper.

The man then attempts to redeem himself by refuting her accusations of his character, and the lady comes to be thoroughly ashamed of having misjudged him so severely. This shame forces her to reevaluate how she has viewed him and treated him and this puts her on the road to liking and esteeming him. The man is further frustrated by his belief that she loves someone else, and though this jealousy torments him it also inspires him to try to rise above it and open his mind and heart in the ways that she accused him of being closed and hard. When he learns of a situation in which she would not only be greatly distressed but acutely embarrassed and even damaged in society, he quickly and quietly takes action to completely alleviate the situation, without expecting or even wanting her acknowledgement or thanks.

Finally, she initiates the conversation that enables him to convince her that his love for her is not only real and present but has deepened since the time of his proposal, and she is able to show him that she now loves him as well.

You all know that to be the basic outline of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but it also happens to be the basic outline of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. Most who are familiar with P&P recognize many echoes of the older story in N&S—not only the evolution of the relationship between the principal couple (i.e., Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, and Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton) as outlined above, but also in certain somewhat parallel characters (e.g., Lady Catherine and Mrs. Thornton; Caroline Bingley and Fanny Thornton) and technique (e.g., Marlborough Mills embodies and reflects the character of John Thornton in much the same way that Pemberley embodies and reflects that of Mr. Darcy both to the reader and to Margaret/Elizabeth). I’ll post more in a future blog on similarities in language as this one is getting longish.

All this said, I don’t want to suggest that in N&S Gaskell simply retold or reshaped P&P into her own setting and time--fanfic it is not. Margaret is not an Elizabeth, and Thornton is not a Darcy, though I believe the men are more similar as characters than Margaret is to Elizabeth, and while both authors deal with the notions of pride and prejudice extensively, they diverge significantly in other themes and tone. Nor do I want to suggest that the strong parallels in N&S to P&P are coincidence or evidence that Austen modeled her story on an earlier archetypal story that Gaskell is also tapping into.

I have a notion that Gaskell consciously used the story arc of P&P for N&S because she desperately wanted to produce a novel that was popular with the middle-class reading public and she looked to what was then and has remained one of the most popular English novels. Though she was proud of her work in Mary Barton and Ruth, she was clearly frustrated by the bitter criticism she received from a variety of reviewers and friends. I have a couple of ideas as to who might have helped her look to Austen for inspiration, but I'll save that for another blog when I've had time to do a bit more research.