Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford
I have been put off reading any fictional Gaskell for a long time because The Life of Charlotte Bronte is so silly. Oh those motherless children! Isolated on that heathen moor! With that dreadful father and that naughty brother! No wonder Emily grew up a dog-beater with mad staring red-rimmed eyes. Don’t read their books, they couldn’t help themselves!
Erm, what?
Also, there was a time when everyone and their dog was watching the BBC adaptation and for some reason I didn’t.
So I have been MISSING OUT AGAIN.
So, Cranford is a little village in Cheshire in the 1840′s, swarming with genteel women deeply concerned with etiquette and gossip. They are sweet and kind and loyal but they are also FIERCE. You would not mess with a Cranford lady and her cap.
Sometimes there are jolly japes – is this a petticoat or a parrot cage? Oh dear me, the laughs! – and sometimes there are serious breaches of social rules – BREADANDCHEESE in the living room, what is the world coming to? But also there is much poignancy and lost love and family secrets and precarious living. And there is death, all the time. In fact, after about three chapters I was wondering if there would be anyone left by the end, because people catch colds and pop their clogs practically every four pages. These ladies might seem silly to you, Gaskell says, but they are resilient and brave and what else do you want?
Perhaps what I like most is that unlike almost any other novel written before, say, 1964, Cranford does not assume that every single woman is in need of a husband. The men in Cranford are twinkly gents, but they are mostly seen as an inconvenience or a distraction from the real business of living – and marriage itself is positively dangerous.
What I don’t like about my edition is that without warning or explanation, Cranford disappears half way through and instead the town is called Dunford and a doctor is narrating. What? Where’s Miss Matty gone?
Also, why is Mrs Gaskell called Mrs Gaskell? I don’t call Charlotte Bronte, Miss Bronte or Charles Dickens, Mr Dickens. (Perhaps I should?) Is it just because she was the only 19th century married novelist?
Posted on June 10, 2011, in Uncategorized and tagged 19th century, books, charlotte bronte, cranford, elizabeth gaskell, fiction, reading, the life of charlotte bronte. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments.
I will be forever grateful that caps and bonnets have gone out of fashion.
I just loved this book! It sound like yours was combined with the other novellas concerning Cranford, but I haven’t read them myself. The miniseries covers all of the books.
Good question about Mrs. Gaskell. I’ve always wondered why George Eliot is still know by her male nom de plume, while the Bronte sisters we know by their real names.
Hmmmm….that is another question I don’t know the answer to. Where are all the English literature students when we need them?
Cranford is one of my favorites. I really get a kick out of the characters. I really appreciate how three dimensional and quirky they are. And I also love the fact that the town was very much a woman’s town — as you mentioned.
The mini-series is absolutely worth a watch. I own it now because I enjoyed it so much. She is such a very different sort of writer than the Brontes or Austen… somewhere in the middle I find. Realistic, yet very readable.
I had heard great things about her bio of her friend, Charlotte Bronte, but it seems you didn’t like it? It’s on my shelf, so I debate reading it every now and again.
As for “Mrs. Gaskell”, I don’t know. My only thought would be this: besides what she published as Cotton Mather Mills, is it possible that she never published (in her lifetime) as Elizabeth Gaskell and only as Mrs. Gaskell?
The Life of Charlotte Bronte is a pretty enjoyable read, but it started off this whole cult of Charlotte Bronte as the Angel in the House which was both seriously inaccurate and doesn’t really do her justice. It’s all about Mrs Gaskell’s agenda and her attempt to rehabilitate Charlotte as a respectable young lady. For example, Mrs Gaskell knew about Charlotte’s ‘relationship’ with a married man in Brussels but completely censored it – even though it really helps to explain some of her books. There’s a really interesting book on this whole subject called ‘The Bronte Myth’. So it’s worth reading, because it’s very novelicious and Mrs Gaskell really lets rip, but it’s hard to read as a ‘biography’.
I read this book towards the beginning of the year and really enjoyed the atmosphere Gaskell created.
I have an old copy of Cranford by “Mrs. Gaskell” …I get a kick out of that–seems just like the sort of peculiarity one of the Cranford ladies would insist on (um, if they were married of course.)
I actually had a difficult time reading Cranford. There were some really delightful, fun, memorable parts, but there were an equal number of boring parts to slog through. I’ve enjoyed a few of her others, but this one just read too much like a sit-com/mini-series for me. I kept hoping there would be more to tie it together. Maybe I just need to watch the mini-series?
I definitely want to watch the programme now – I wonder whether it’s because we don’t read these sort of serials any more that we find them a bit….what’s going on here?
Mrs Gaskell was called Mrs Gaskell simply because that is who she was! It was a custom in the 18th, 19th and even into the beginning of the 20th century for husbands even to call their wives Mrs plus their last name i.e. Mrs Gaskell, Mrs Smith. Cooks in domestic service were also given the courtesy title of Mrs although very few were married women. This was a mark of respect regardless of of marital status. However, since the latter part of the 20th century the marital neutral ‘Ms’ has become the default title for women professionally and socially. I know I am getting on a bit but over my lifetime I have seen a huge shift in the once coveted title of Mrs to Ms. Miss seems to have almost fizzled out now apart for female children. I remember years ago haveing ‘heated debates’ with my contemporaries over them using the title Ms not Miss. These days however, even I am not bothered and 20 years ago I would never have believed I would be saying that!
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