The Young Bluestockings Continue to Read Cranford

Hello? Anyone home? Have I interrupted your reading? A thousand pardons!

Have you finished the book yet? I must say, this was my first outing with Elizabeth Gaskell’s work, but I found the tone delightful. From the very first, the humor leapt out at me. I read some lines aloud to my husband, who even found a chuckle.

Mrs. Gaskell, as she was often called by her adoring readers, began life as Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson. She did not have an easy childhood. She was the youngest of eight children, all of whom except a brother died in infancy, and her mother died a little over a year after giving birth to Elizabeth. Her grief-stricken father sent her to live with an aunt, even after he married again and had two more children. It is said the aunt’s home in Knutsford, Cheshire, was the pattern for the town of Cranford as well as Hollingford in Wives and Daughters, another of her works with which 19 Teen readers might be familiar. I couldn’t help wondering whether Miss Matty’s brother Peter wasn’t modeled a bit after Mrs. Gaskell’s brother John, a sailor in the Merchant Marine, who disappeared during an expedition to India in 1827.

At age 22, Elizabeth married a Unitarian minister like her father. Two years later, they were blessed with a daughter (Marianne), followed by Margaret in 1837, Florence in 1842, and Julia in 1846. Between Florence and Julia, Elizabeth gave birth to a son, William, who died in infancy like her siblings. It was said she felt his death so keenly that only writing would provide a solace, and her husband suggested that she try a novel rather than the short stories she had written up until then.

Her first novel (Mary Barton) was published anonymously in 1848. Though some protested the story, which deals with the working class and those who fancy themselves above and includes some darker themes, the work garnered the attention of the likes of Charles Dickens. He invited her to submit her work to his Household Words, a popular magazine. She would write Cranford for him in a series of stories, as Marissa mentioned, beginning in 1851.

But while Cranford is noted for its droll humor and delicate characterizations, Elizabeth had a strong sense of what today we would call social justice. Unlike many books published during that time, which featured the upper classes, her North and South, like Mary Barton, not only dealt with the working class but showed a marked affinity for their situations.

While her works were quite popular during her time, her literary career was not without controversy. In 1853, she dared to write a novel that openly discussed the plight of women who had been seduced and bore illegitimate children. Supposedly her readers found it quite shocking. In addition, she had met and befriended Charlotte Bronte and was asked by Charlotte’s father to write her biography. The work is heralded by many as a model for biographies, but Elizabeth was actually threatened with a lawsuit because of her depiction of some of the people in it. 

She was, apparently, a warm, welcoming hostess, who was kind to the poor and loved to travel with her daughters. Sadly, Elizabeth passed away in 1865, leaving Wives and Daughters unfinished, although at enough of a stopping point that it was published posthumously.

So, what do you think of the delightful Mrs. Gaskell?

Do you see any other influences from her life in Cranford?

Have you read or seen the adaptations for Wives and Daughters or North and South? How did they compare to Cranford?

Please, chime in!

NineteenTeen’s Young Bluestockings Read Cranford

This week on NineteenTeen we’ll be discussing what is probably Elizabeth Gaskell’s best known and loved work, Cranford. Were you all able to find copies (freebies are available online since it’s not in copyright)? Have you read it before, or was this your first time?

Cranford started out life as a short story published in Charles Dickens’s Household Words magazine in December 1851. Readers were delighted with the story of a village of “Amazons” who still seem to be living twenty years (at least!) in the past, and though Gaskell was busy with other writing (her novel Ruth) Dickens prevailed upon her to write more—which accounts for the episodic nature of the story-telling. Her Cranford pieces appeared in random order until 1853, when they were compiled and published in book form.

As a result, there isn’t much of a plot, or only a very loose one—the events in the lives of a group of genteel if poor gentlewomen in a country village, still clinging to many of the outmoded mores and customs of their youth. A few new faces are periodically introduced, and old ones leave and, of course, anything that does occur (or even seems to occur) in the village gets blown into enormous proportions—to often comic result.

It had been some years since I read Cranford, and while I remember loving it at that first reading, I’d forgotten just how very funny it is. Gaskell is working on a small piece of ivory much like Jane Austen’s, but I find her humor leans more toward the droll, though she too uses a healthy dose of gentle irony and satire. But that’s not her only goal—though one may laugh quietly at some of the antics of the ladies of Cranford (the gray flannel pajamas for Miss Barker’s cow! The rescue of Mrs. Forrester’s lace from the inside of poor puss! Miss Pole’s seven brooches worn to call on Mrs. Jamieson!) there’s also a great deal of poignancy in the quiet tale of Miss Matty’s thwarted romance with Mr. Holbrook and her adoption of widow-ish caps after his death, and the death of her mother after Peter runs away to join the navy.

Ah, Miss Matty. She’s a delight, is she not? A little silly, a little naïve, but so thoroughly sweet and kind that any amount of silliness (like that over sea-green turbans) can be forgiven her. Even the ladies of Cranford, generally less good than their friend and often the target of Gaskell’s humor (notably Miss Pole), rally round her when her savings are lost in a bank failure.

But overall it’s the funny little details and turns of phrase that are dropped that make this book for me:

“...even Miss Pole herself, whom we looked upon as a kind of prophetess, from the knack she had of foreseeing things before they came to pass—although she did not like to disturb her friends by telling them her foreknowledge....”

“But I was right. I think that must be an hereditary quality, for my father says he is scarcely ever wrong.”

“...the contemplation of it, even at this distance of time, has taken away my breath and my grammar, and unless I subdue my emotion, my spelling will go too.”

So, NineteenTeen readers—what did you think of Cranford?

• Any favorite or not-so-favorite bits? (I’m not overly fond of the coincidences and the deus ex machina arrival at the end which saves the day. How about you?)

• Any points of history you’d like to discuss? (I enjoyed the many fashion references, of course, including a mention of gigot sleeves!)

• Which characters did you like or dislike the most?

Discuss!  And if you haven’t read it yet, get started and jump on in!

Did They Really Say That?

One of the joys of leafing through the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is running across slang expressions and figures of speech still in use today that you would never guess were particularly old...but as it turns out, are. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve run across, along with their definitions as listed in the DVT, that make me laugh...and marvel at their longevity. Enjoy!

Sea Lawyer: A shark  (Yes, really!  This reminds me of an anecdote that I posted about a while back. Who knew lawyer jokes had such a long and distinguished history? )

Coming!  So is Christmas: Said of a person who has long been called, and at length answers, Coming! (We use this all the time in my family, so it totally tickled me to find it here.)

Birth-day Suit: He was in his birth-day suit, that is, stark naked. (Okay, this one totally surprised me—it just doesn’t sound old, does it?)

Black and White: In writing. I have it in black and white; I have written evidence. (Another very modern-sounding expression—maybe because we have a picture in our 21^st century heads of 19^th century paper being brownish rather than white?)

Kick the bucket: To die. He kicked the bucket one day; he died one day. (I did a little research on the origin of this phrase; the Oxford English Dictionary favors the one which involves pigs to be slaughtered being hung from a beam to allow the blood to drain from the carcass, the beam in question being a trébuchet or buque in French (so presumably a Norman borrowing?)

Bears and Bulls: A bear is one who contracts to deliver a certain quantity or sum of stock in the publics funds, on a future day, and at stated price; or, in other words, sells what he has not got, like the huntsman in the fable, who sold the bear’s skin before the bear was killed. As the bear sells the stock he is not possessed of, so the bull purchases what he has not money to pay for; but in case of any alteration in the price agreed on, either party pays or receives the difference. (Wow, who knew?  It looks like the terms date from as much as a century before, tied up with the South Sea Bubble incident of ca. 1717.)

All right!: A favourite expression among thieves, to signify that all is as they wish, or proper for their purpose.

And speaking of all right, Regina and I thought it might be an all right time to have a group read since we haven’t done one for a long time. So mark your calendars for the week of March 29, when we’ll be discussing Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1853 classic Cranford. Regina and I will provide some history, but we hope you’ll jump in with comments and opinions.  And the cool thing is you can find Cranford for free on-line, at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as at Project Gutenberg. 

  

Happy reading!