Elizabeth Gaskell Books

the story of that girl, and that "mistake" and how 90% of the world closes their door, and turns their back

I have read most of Elizabeth Gaskell's books, and like some of her others, this one starts out slow, but builds in interest towards the middle. You really empathize with the main character, and the harsh judgement she receives is shocking by today's standards. The book provided a lot of food for thought and was an enjoyable read.

Ruth is a tale of redemption set in early nineteenth century England.
Ruth is a young seamstress who is seduced at the age of 16 by a despicable and stupid cad whose name is Henry Bellingham. He deserts her on a holiday in Wales forcing the pregnant Ruth to flee.
Ruth finds a lodging and Christian love at the home of an elderly clergyman the Rev. Benson, his maiden sister Faith and their grouchy but kindhearted maid Susan.
Years pass and Ruth is loved by the community until her secret is revealed through gossip. She remains in Eccleston winning the approbation of the community following her nursing patients in a typhoid fever plague sweeping the village. She rejects the advances of her erstwhile lover who is in Eccleston with a new name "Mr Donne" and a position as the MP in the British Parliament in London.
With her secret made manifest Ruth is able to soldier on in life. She is rejected by the stern Mr. Bradshaw who hired her for years as a teacher to his daughters Jemima, Mary and Elizabeth. Ruth wins favor when she dies nursing Bellingham in the epidemic as well as several other townspeople. Her former enemy Mr. Bradshaw even buys an ornate gravestone.
Ruth is a candid look at the Victorian double standard and the second class citizenship of women in British society. The novel is beautifully written with lyrical passages on bird and animal life and the change in seasons in a small English town in the nineteenth century . This reviewer fell in love with Ruth who reminds one of Esther Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's American classic "The Scarlet Letter." Ruth is one of the best Victorian novels you will read for its compassionate view of the human condition. The sequences in which the major characters have dreams is especially well done. Ruth will win your heart!

Mrs. Gaskell tackled a very controversial theme in this novel (having a child out of wedlock) and shocked many of her contemporary readers. Ruth Hilton, a dressmaker, is seduced by the wealthy Henry Bellingham; he deserts her, after which she bears his child. Taken in by the kindly Thurston Benson and his sister under the pretense of being a young widow, Ruth gains employment as governess to the Bradshaw family. When Bellingham returns and Ruth will have nothing to do with him, the self-righteous Mr. Bradshaw learns the truth of her past and dismisses her. In a disappointing (though perhaps obligatory for the time) ending, when Bellingham becomes ill with cholera, Ruth goes to his aid, contracts the disease, and dies. Many have questioned why Mrs. Gaskell had to have Ruth die, and it does seem unnecessary, except that throughout the book Ruth has been portrayed almost as perfect as an angel, and perhaps it was to the angels she needed to send her. The most human character (as opposed to typecasts, as most of the others are) is Sally, the Benson's servant girl; she is funny, brutally honest, and wonderfully practical, especially in her dealings with Ruth (the scene where she crops Ruth's hair to make her look like the widow she is claiming to be is delightful). Mrs. Gaskell's purpose in writing the book was to generate sympathy for women who were victims of unscrupulous men; forty years later Thomas Hardy wrote a similar themed novel, TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES. Ruth and Tess are twin characters in many ways. It's an interesting slice-of-life from the mid-Victorian period.

"Ruth" is one of five books written by Elizabeth Gaskell. It deals with aspects of English life in the first half of the 19th Century.

It is difficult to say much about the plot itself without giving away important details of the story. Suffice to say that Ruth, who is an orphan and from a humble background is put through the wringer of life.

The characters and their actions are often exaggerated to the point of almost being caricatures to modern readers. But this style maximises the emotional content of many of the incidents described in the book and is very typical of "romantic" English literature of the era. The same can be said of Dickens, Thackeray and Jane Austen.

Extended descriptive passages and the drawing-out of emotional scenes can be irritating because it slows down the narrative and is too obvious a device to hook the discerning reader. Presumably readers of the day loved this stuff - much as modern readers go for similar depictions on TV and in print.

However, the narrative itself is gripping, especially towards the end of the book when events reach their climax and the various threads of the plot are drawn together. There are exciting twists and turns in the plot, almost like a modern thriller. This is where Gaskell shines - she is a very skilful constructor of intricate story plots. It is difficult to put the book down as we near the end of the story.

Another area in which Gaskell shines is her depiction of characters, even though they might be standard "types" to readers of the day.

Mr Bellingham, who later changed his name to Mr Donne, is a central figure in the story, yet he is only superficially dealt with by the author. For much of the book he is just a ghostly presence. This appears to me to be such a glaring fault that I assume the handling of Bellingham/Donne was a conscious decision of Gaskell.

I can only assume that by making him such a shadowy, almost trivial, figure Gaskell makes the contrast with Ruth's trials and tribulations even more stark and harrowing. If that is indeed the case, then this book becomes more stylistically sophisticated and modern than a mere tear-jerking romance.

"Ruth", like all Gaskell's books is an enjoyable read for the story alone. One can skip over much of the purple descriptive bits without any loss. The book also gives a valuable insight into attitudes and ways of life in the early 19th century. This will interest readers who love history. Fiction such as this can illuminate social history.

Once again Hawksley has written a story that keeps the reader more than simply interested. The characters are sympathetic, but not portrayed as in any way approaching perfection. Both defects and virtues are presented in a natural, real way. They are more than mere cardboard figures manipulated by the author.
Both hero and heroine are strong characters, but although they of course they are obviously set to clash over the Belevedere Tower, they do not behave with pig-headed stupidity. As all too often does occur in historical romance fiction.
True, there is a strong element of melodrama with Cassandra's husband's violent return, but it was not foolishly far-fetched.
Daniel was particularly well rounded, for in the beginning he definitely had forfeited some reader sympathy by is treatment of his mistress. However, his very real growth as the book progressed showed this was not a permanent fault of character.

"Mary Barton" is one of five books written by Elizabeth Gaskell. Mary Barton is a young woman in a working class Manchester family in the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England. Industrial workers often lived lives of poverty and squalor, at the mercy of factory owners who ruled them with a rod of iron and fired them whenever economic conditions deteriorated.

Another of Gaskell's books, "North and South" deals with the same theme, but from the point of view of the better-off classes in society. Both books vividly portray life in the rapidly growing Midland towns of England.

It is difficult to say much about the plot of "Mary Barton" itself without giving away important details of the story. Suffice to say that Mary Barton is put through the wringer of life in a story that reaches an exciting and satisfying climax.

The characters and their actions are often exaggerated to the point of almost being caricatures to modern readers. But this style maximises the emotional content of many of the incidents described in the book and is very typical of "romantic" English literature of the era. The same can be said of Dickens, Thackeray and Jane Austen. However, it must be said that this book is the "worst" of Gaskell's books so far as convoluted and turgid prose is concerned.

Extended descriptive passages and the drawing-out of emotional scenes can be irritating because it slows down the narrative and is too obvious a device to hook the discerning reader. Presumably readers of the day loved this stuff - much as modern readers go for similar depictions on TV and in print.

However, the narrative itself is gripping, especially towards the end of the book when events reach their climax and the various threads of the plot are drawn together. There are exciting twists and turns in the plot, almost like a modern thriller. This is where Gaskell shines - she is a very skilful constructor of intricate story plots. It is difficult to put the book down as we near the end of the story.

Another area in which Gaskell shines is her depiction of characters, even though they might be standard "types" to readers of the day. What strikes the modern reader is the submissive role of women and attitudes towards women in the first half of the 19th century. Yet the actions of Mary Barton strikingly deviate from the norm as the story reaches its climax.

"Mary Barton", like all Gaskell's books is an enjoyable read for the story alone. One can skip over much of the purple descriptive bits without any loss. The book also gives a valuable insight into attitudes and ways of life in the early 19th century. This will interest readers who love history. Fiction such as this can illuminate social history.

The book Preaching Pity : Dickens, Gaskell, and Sentimentalism in Victorian Culture (Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Vol. 11), by Mary Lenard provided an insightful analyzation of the birth of public feeling in the Victorian Era. She uses the works of Dickens and Gaskell to prove her points, which she does quite well. Her book demostrated a deep knowledge of England during that time period. It gave the reader a feelinig of involement in the book and the historical happenings noted. Although the subject matter is a bit dry, she managed to make it interesting. This book is a must have for researchers and historical buffs alike!

I hate reading but this book made me want to get to the end to see what happens!

I would reccomend it to anyone!

In this bleak novel Elizabeth Gaskell deftly weaves a dark thread of history into her narrative tapestry. While war hovers on the margins of the novel, no one is left unaffected by its horror. After a sometimes painfully slow setup of domestic life in the seaside town of Monkshaven in the first third of the book, the sense of doom grows increasingly palpable. Sylvia, the novel's heroine, is isolated by her supposedly protective domestic sphere, but Gaskell shatters the delicate domestic circle that surrounds her. While Sylvia is left to bear emotional scars, becoming an impassive, hardened woman, Charley Kinraid, her true love, returns from war a ghost, haunting the margins of Monkshaven to hide his terrible physical scars. The full realization of the blight on Sylvia's life comes when the novel spirals down to its inevitable conclusion, where even reconciliation and understanding brings a powerful sense of loss.

"Sylvia's Lovers" is one of five books written by Elizabeth Gaskell. The main character, Sylvia, grew up in North England at the end of the 18th century. The book was written in 1863, after the Industrial Revolution had transformed England, and harks back somewhat nostalgically to a vanished, largely rural, age. Gaskell's previous books were set in the industrial revolution and describe its devastating impacts on the working classes.

One incident in the story describes a trip to London, which seemed almost a foreign country to people living in the north at the time and required a lengthy boat trip from Newcastle to get there. By the middle of the 19th century this trip would have been done by rail in a fraction of the time.

The narrative and dialogue are heavily laced with religious references. Gaskell was married to a Unitarian minister, so it is difficult to tell if that influenced her choice of dialog, or whether the readers of the day expected that sort of thing. I find it difficult to believe that the ordinary people of the day were so fixated on religion.

It is difficult to say much about the plot itself without giving away important details of the story. Suffice to say that Sylvia, who is an orphan and from a humble background is put through the wringer of life. Gaskell started the book, put aside and then finished much later. This interruption gives rise to some slight jarring in the treatment of the principal characters in the second half of the book, although this minor defect is only noticeable to the observant reader.

The characters and their actions are often exaggerated to the point of almost being caricatures to modern readers. But this style maximises the emotional content of many of the incidents described in the book and is very typical of "romantic" English literature of the era. The same can be said of Dickens, Thackeray and Jane Austen.

Extended descriptive passages and the drawing-out of emotional scenes can be irritating because it slows down the narrative and is too obvious a device to hook the discerning reader. Presumably readers of the day loved this stuff - much as modern readers go for similar depictions on TV and in print.

However, the narrative itself is gripping, especially towards the end of the book when events reach their climax and the various threads of the plot are drawn together. There are exciting twists and turns in the plot, almost like a modern thriller. This is where Gaskell shines - she is a very skilful constructor of intricate story plots. It is difficult to put the book down as we near the end of the story.

Gaskell is brilliant in evoking mental images in the reader. We are drawn into the story in our imagination and construct our own imagery of the characters and settings. This, of course, is why books will always be with us and will never be supplanted by TV.

Another area in which Gaskell shines is her depiction of characters, even though they might be standard "types" to readers of the day.

"Sylvia's Lovers", like all Gaskell's books, is an enjoyable read for the story alone. One can skip over much of the purple descriptive bits without any loss. The book also gives a valuable insight into attitudes and ways of life in the early 19th century. This will interest readers who love history. Fiction such as this can illuminate social history.

To give one example, this book, like much of the literature of the era, mentions death a great deal. In the days before sanitation and safe water and before the use of modern drugs, death was a very familiar occurrence in every family - not something largely hidden and invisible as it is in modern society.

One of the books in which every thing seems to be so perfect and good ,but in the end everything is ruined.It is one of the book, which I never wanted to end.It justs need a little sentence in the end and that is "to be continued" .

It took me several months to finish this rather short book. The plot is fairly simple with nary a twist, the characters admirable but somewhat one-dimensionable. It seems to be an ode to conservatism--a longing for the "peace of the old days." As a fan of 19th century English lit, this left me wondering why Elizabeth Gaskell is considered a classic writer; admittedly I haven't read some of her better known works such as "North and South."

(This is a book review about `Cranford' and `Cousin Phillis' of the Penguin Classics edition, edited by Peter Keating.)

[CRANFORD] Elizabeth Gaskell's `Cranford' is very different from her more serious `Mary Barton' and `North and South,' both written with socially conscious messages. In fact, its basic tone is comedy (or tragicomedy) set against the background of the changing local community of Cranford, or `Our Society' which is, as the narrator says, "in possession of the Amazons."

The main characters are all elderly ladies. You meet kind-hearted and timid Miss Matty with her domineering sister Deborah, the most memorable characters in this town. Narrated by one Mary Smith, we are introduced to the small world of Cranford, where smallest things can be pleasure or trouble such as `conjuror' Signor Brunoni amazing the ladies in the town's Assembly Room, or some rumor about `robbery' and even `ghosts' that scare them in `Darkness-Lane.' There is Lady Glenmire, who comes to Cranford, and shocks the community by marrying a doctor (and becoming `Mrs. Hoggins'). With these episodes, Elizabeth Gaskell deftly describes the sisterhood among the gossipy ladies with deep sense of sympathy, and the events are described with her sure-handed touch, which provides funny moments and occasional pathos.

Some part may not be interesting today. Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns have an argument about the merit of novel reading, and while Captain praises Dickens' `Pickwick Papers,' Miss Jenkyns insists on the superiority of Samuel Johnson This is not only an in-joke (`Cranford' first appeared as eight-part serial in Dickens' Household Words first in 1851), it also reflects that these ladies in Cranford stick to their strict social codes that are clearly getting too old outside the community. The scene itself is humorous, and behind the humor you can find the author's keen eye for details.

But the book can be enjoyed without such historical knowledge, and there are many touching scenes concerning Miss Matty's life. As `Cranford' is written without concrete planning, the entire work looks very episodic. Actually it is episodic (and that's why one major character suddenly disappear at Chapter 2), and it should be read as such, like a series of sketches or short stories.

[COUSIN PHILLIS] `Cousin Phillis' is first published as four-part serial in 1863, and is about a fleeting love affair in a rural community, where the titular daughter of a `minister' (and self-help type of farmer) lives quietly. This is what we call a `novella' and its tone is sadder than `Cranford' but still is written with well-observed descriptions of the characters and the community that we know would undergo drastic change sooner or later.

THE PENGUIN edition by PETER KEATING contains Appendix A: `The Last Generation in England' and Appendix B: `The Cage at Cranford' both by Gaskell. The first one would throw light on the background of Cranford, and the second one (a sequel written about 10 years after the original) is an enjoyable (if not outstanding) short story.

`Cranford' is a delightful book that reminded me of E.F. Benson's equally delightful Mapp and Lucia books. Teachers may not use these books as text in the English literature courses in university, but the fact remains that these books are as priceless as any other Victorian novels.

I see I'm the first person to review this book, and I can understand why. No one else has read it. That's because it's almost unreadable. The type is very small. The author cannot have omitted a single scrap of his copious research. His selection skills need honing. People with only remote connections to EG, and many with no connection at all, are discussed in tedious detail.

This book is definitely not for the common reader. The details may interest other scholars, and the author is probably justifiably proud of all the new facts he's unearthed, but these do not make for compelling, or even interesting, reading by ordinary fans of literary biographies.