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The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell
In the last few decades Elizabeth Gaskell has become a figure of growing importance in the field of Victorian literary studies. She produced work of great variety and scope in the course of a highly successful writing career that lasted for about twenty years from the mid-1840s to her unexpected death in 1865. The essays in this Companion draw on recent advances in biographical and bibliographical studies of Gaskell and cover the range of her impressive and varied output as a writer of novels, biography, short stories, and letters. The volume, which features well-known scholars in the field of Gaskell studies, focuses throughout on her narrative versatility and her literary responses to the social, cultural, and intellectual transformations of her time. This Companion will be invaluable for students and scholars of Victorian literature, and includes a chronology and guide to further reading.
211 pages, Paperback
First published February 22, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 7, 2018
One thing you’ll learn from The Cambridge Companion (CC) is that Manchester, England, where Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) lived, was the first industrialized city, birthplace as it were of the Industrial Revolution. Gaskell’s first hit novel, Mary Barton (1848), was about Manchester, factory bosses, working people’s families and the titanic shifts occurring as life in cities and work in factories displaced traditional agricultural lifeways on country estates. Would it be Marxist class warfare? Or would both sides learn to get along?
Between its covers the volume includes twelve chapters by twelve different writers addressing different issues surrounding Gaskell’s life and work. Chapter Eleven, “Unitarian Dissent,” by John Chapple is a contender for most important because it places Mrs. Gaskell within the many belief streams flowing through 19th century British life. The Gaskells were Unitarians, believing with Joseph Priestley (1733– 1804) that we can learn, all of us, we can think, we can observe, we can make decisions and solve problems, we can discover how to live and we can earn heaven by living right. No one is doomed to hell for committing the sin of being born.
None of these ideas would necessarily outrage conventional Christians of Anglican or Methodist persuasion. But Priestley as a next step “came to believe that Christ was only human,” not a god, which was rank heresy against “The Redeemer” directly, and then destructive of The Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This step brought thundering from church pulpits, and a mob burnt Priestley’s home, laboratory and church to the ground in 1791. At least until 1921 British courts continued to accept suits charging perpetrators with heretical or blasphemous speech.
Thus a more cautious breed of Unitarian followed Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lead and “began to appeal to imagination, the soul’s natural piety, and the known devotion of other sects rather than the clear-eyed rationalism of the Priestley tradition.” Elizabeth Gaskell was one of these.
So she walked a middle path. On the one hand she exposed certain characters in her novels to problems the new ways of life were causing and had her readers follow along as the characters sought solutions for these problems. Then looking the other way she showed characters struggling against the loss of traditional ways and values, then gently suggested ways such values as we have inherited from our forebears might be preserved.
Taken altogether, then, Gaskell’s characters struggle to grow, to establish and maintain healthy, functional forms of self-definition while losing touch with old reliable truths, relationships and ways our ancestors thrived on, while rushing forward into challenging, scary new territory. She aimed at truth-telling but tried to avoid alarm ringing.
She was a wife, mother and eventually grandmother; she was a minister’s wife with chapel duties in addition to management of an extended household; she wrote herself into fame and fortune, she became a woman of worth in her own right and was eventually bringing home more money than her husband William; and at the end of her life she bought a house for herself then died of a heart attack in that house before she had a chance to tell her husband what she’d done.
Readers, critics and scholars in the early 20th century looked back at the 19th century and felt that everyone back there was sound asleep. This book puts you in the company of a woman who was wide awake, paddling her own canoe and carefully avoiding the rocks on the one hand and the whirlpool on the other threatening to swallow her up. If you let it, it can even be exciting.
Between its covers the volume includes twelve chapters by twelve different writers addressing different issues surrounding Gaskell’s life and work. Chapter Eleven, “Unitarian Dissent,” by John Chapple is a contender for most important because it places Mrs. Gaskell within the many belief streams flowing through 19th century British life. The Gaskells were Unitarians, believing with Joseph Priestley (1733– 1804) that we can learn, all of us, we can think, we can observe, we can make decisions and solve problems, we can discover how to live and we can earn heaven by living right. No one is doomed to hell for committing the sin of being born.
None of these ideas would necessarily outrage conventional Christians of Anglican or Methodist persuasion. But Priestley as a next step “came to believe that Christ was only human,” not a god, which was rank heresy against “The Redeemer” directly, and then destructive of The Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This step brought thundering from church pulpits, and a mob burnt Priestley’s home, laboratory and church to the ground in 1791. At least until 1921 British courts continued to accept suits charging perpetrators with heretical or blasphemous speech.
Thus a more cautious breed of Unitarian followed Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lead and “began to appeal to imagination, the soul’s natural piety, and the known devotion of other sects rather than the clear-eyed rationalism of the Priestley tradition.” Elizabeth Gaskell was one of these.
So she walked a middle path. On the one hand she exposed certain characters in her novels to problems the new ways of life were causing and had her readers follow along as the characters sought solutions for these problems. Then looking the other way she showed characters struggling against the loss of traditional ways and values, then gently suggested ways such values as we have inherited from our forebears might be preserved.
Taken altogether, then, Gaskell’s characters struggle to grow, to establish and maintain healthy, functional forms of self-definition while losing touch with old reliable truths, relationships and ways our ancestors thrived on, while rushing forward into challenging, scary new territory. She aimed at truth-telling but tried to avoid alarm ringing.
She was a wife, mother and eventually grandmother; she was a minister’s wife with chapel duties in addition to management of an extended household; she wrote herself into fame and fortune, she became a woman of worth in her own right and was eventually bringing home more money than her husband William; and at the end of her life she bought a house for herself then died of a heart attack in that house before she had a chance to tell her husband what she’d done.
Readers, critics and scholars in the early 20th century looked back at the 19th century and felt that everyone back there was sound asleep. This book puts you in the company of a woman who was wide awake, paddling her own canoe and carefully avoiding the rocks on the one hand and the whirlpool on the other threatening to swallow her up. If you let it, it can even be exciting.
July 2, 2021
Another great collection of essays for anyone who wants to learn more about Elizabeth Gaskell. This anthology gives due attention to every aspect of oft-overlooked Victorian author's work, from her famous industrial novels to her hybrid short stories. I particularly enjoyed the essay on 'Cranford' and 'Ruth' by Audrey Jaffe, even though it was probably the most unconnected to my work. As Gaskell novels go, it would be difficult to pick two completely opposing books in terms of themes or story as those two. Jaffe fascinatingly connects them, however, and it was easily the best-presented argument in the collection. I would recommend 'The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell' to anyone looking for a deeper insight into the author's work.
November 28, 2017
Very interesting collection of essays regarding Elizabeth Gaskell
December 4, 2013
"an interesting reading of E.Gaskell's works giving credit to a writer who can be said to convey the spirit of the Victorian society in a way that raises polemics."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews