Gaskell, Elizabeth. (1810 - 1865).
W o r k
- preoccupied with Manchester = the urban phenomenon of the age
> commercial success of manufacture, pioneering of the factory system, and use of huge amounts of human and physical energy
> human problems of rapid industrialisation, divisions of class, hard labour, and low quality of life
Mary Barton (1848):
- a ‘Tale of Manchester Life’
- the industrial conflict, strikes and lock-outs, enforced unemployment, low wages, and the consequentially growing class-consciousness
- an observation of contrasting ways of living, working, and perceiving: the ignorance of both the readers and characters of Manchester slum conditions
North and South (1854 - 1855):
- her second Manchester novel, politically optimistic
- contrasts the snobberies, chivalries, and artificiality of the country gentry of the South x the anti-gentlemanly self-made manufacturers of the North
- admires the independence and pride of industrial workers despite the appalling working and living conditions x against the subservience, acquiescence, and superstition of the rural poor
Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1864 - 1866):
- her finest novels about the growth of contrasted female protagonists
(1) Sylvia's Lovers: a farmer’s daughter, barely educated, self-willed, and passionate, divided between resolution x equally heady irresolution: her marriage proves a disaster
(2) Wives and Daughters: a respected widowed doctor’s daughter grows to maturity through a series of domestic crises: her marriage proves a meeting of equals
Quote
"Margaret's whole soul rose up against him while he reasoned in this way—as if commerce were everything and humanity nothing."
From North and South (1854 - 1855).
Basics
(Portrait: George Richmond. 1951. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson. Married Gaskell. (1810 - 1865). British. -
Work
Novelist. Author of "Manchester Novels". -
Genres
Victorian period. Regionalism. Urban novel.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.