Mrs. Gaskell and Mothers of the Novel

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (born 29 September 1810)

Among nineteenth-century women novelists (aside from the Brontë sisters, of course) Elizabeth Gaskell may be one of the best known to modern readers, if for no other reason than several of her works of fiction have been made into television series--in 1999, the BBC aired a four-part adaptation of Wives and Daughters; in 2004, the BBC produced a four-episode mini-series of North and South; and a 2007-2008 BBC adaptation of Cranford, starring Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins, earned BAFTA, Emmy, and Golden Globe awards. All three productions aired in the US on PBS.

Born on 20 September 1810 in Chelsea, Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was the daughter of William Stevenson, a Unitarian minister, treasury official, and journalist, and Elizabeth Holland, whose family also had strong Unitarian connections.

Elizabeth was the youngest of their eight children (only two of whom would survive infancy). Her mother died in 1811, just months after giving birth to Elizabeth, who at thirteen months old was sent to live with her mother's sister, Hannah Lumb, whom Elizabeth would later describe as "more than a mother."

The young Elizabeth Stevenson,
miniature portrait by
William John Thompson

William Stevenson remarried, raising a second family with his second wife, Catherine Thompson, while Elizabeth remained with her maternal family in Cheshire throughout most of her childhood. The Cheshire market town of Knutsford, where Elizabeth lived with her aunt, was transformed by fiction into the town of Cranford.

(Catherine Thompson Stevenson's brother, the miniaturist William John Thompson, would later paint the portrait of Elizabeth as a young woman I've included on this entry.)

In 1832, Elizabeth Stevenson married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister associated with the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester.

As the Gaskell Society describes it, Manchester in the early nineteenth century "was a great cultural and intellectual centre, boasting institutions like the Literary and Philosophical Society, the Mechanics Institute and the Athenaeum. It was at the forefront of the new industrial age, but this rapid growth, as well as generating much wealth, also led to uncontrolled urban development and appalling squalor."

In her new life in the city, Elizabeth Gaskell worked with her husband to offer aid and support for the poor and to teach reading and writing, in addition to Scripture, in the Unitarian Sunday school. She observed the radical politics and social tensions of the city--as she would write in the preface to her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), "I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want."

During the first years of her marriage, Gaskell gave birth to three daughters (1834, 1837, 1842), and she began writing, publishing several stories. But after the death of her son, who died of scarlet fever in 1845, just nine months old, Gaskell began writing a novel, at her husband's suggestion, as a way of distracting herself from her profound grief. 

That novel, Mary Barton, depicted the dire circumstances of industrial workers in the city of Manchester, profoundly affecting the public conscience. It also brought Gaskell to the attention of Charles Dickens, who included her work in his publications and helped her to become one of the most popular authors of her day.

Gaskell did not avoid controversy. Her novel Ruth, published in 1855, tells the story of a young seamstress who works in a sweatshop; seduced and betrayed by her lover, she attempts suicide and gives birth to an illegitimate child. Although the "fallen" woman ultimately redeems herself, she is never allowed to be happy or fully reintegrated into society--though after her death she is praised by those who knew her.

North and South (1855) is an example of what is now called a "social novel," focusing on the tensions between employers and workers from the perspective of a young woman who moves from her home in the rural south of England to live in the industrial town of Milton, a fictionalized Manchester.

Sylvia's Lovers (1863) is set during the Napoleonic period, and unlike her more well-known work, is a story of obsessive love, enforced military service (the notorious press gangs), dutiful marriage, and the eventual realization that an unloved husband is loved after all.

Gaskell's last novel, Wives and Daughters, was published in serial installments from August 1864 to January 1865, but Gaskell died before she completed the coming-of-age story of Molly Gibson, whose father remarries, bringing into the young girl's life a pretty but dangerous stepsister, Cynthia Kirkpatrick.

Gaskell was also a friend of the novelist Charlotte Brontë, whom she met in 1850, and she wrote the first biography of Charlotte, who died in 1855, based on their shared correspondence. The biography was published in 1857, and it provoked controversy--in her work, Gaskell suppressed some aspects of her friend's passion for the married Constantin Heger, while emphasizing the dissolute nature of Charlotte's brother Branwell and overemphasizing the Brontë sisters' isolation. Gaskell faced the prospect of lawsuits for her depictions of many Brontë friends and acquaintances who objected to Gaskell's depiction of them in the biography. 

Elizabeth Gaskell,
a photograph from c. 1860

Gaskell died suddenly of a heart attack on 12 November 1865 in Hampshire, where she was buying a home that was to be for her retirement. She was just fifty-five years old. Her last novel, North and South, was unfinished.

The Gaskell Society’s website, which I’ve linked to above, offers extraordinary resources. If you have access to this resource, an excellent account of Gaskell's life and work is Jenny Linglow's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (click here). 

If you enjoy podcasts, you will want to listen to this episode of In Our Time, "Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South" (click here).

Emily Brontë and Mothers of the Novel

Emily Brontë (born 30 July 1818)

Born on 30 July 1818, Emily Brontë published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, under the pen name of "Ellis Bell."

Emily Brontë, as painted by her
brother

I've already posted about her elder sister, Charlotte, and her younger, Anne. Together the three novelists make a formidable grouping of "mothers of the novel," though they are much more familiar to contemporary readers than some of the other women novelists we have seen to this point in our year of daily postings on women's history.

Her earliest work was in creating the fictional world of Gondal with her sister, Anne. Wuthering Heights was published in London in 1847. Her publisher believed she had begun another novel; if so, it was never completed. Emily Brontë died on 19 December 1848. 

Update, 4 November 2017: If you're in the mood for a podcast, you will enjoy this episode of the BBC Radio 4 In Our Times--it's a discussion of Wuthering Heights. The episode was broadcast at the end of September--I'm a bit behind in listening!

Anne Bronte, English Novelist

 Anne Bronte (died 28 May 1849)

Less well known than her two older sisters, Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights), Anne Bronte is also a poet and novelist--a quite extraordinary novelist, in fact. 

Anne Brontë, detail from the
portait of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne
by Branwell, c. 1835

Born on 17 January 1820, Anne published her poetry, pseudonymously, in an 1846 volume with her sisters, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although she died young, at the age of just twenty-nine, she also published two novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

Anne's first novel details the story of a young governess, reflecting her own experiences as a governess at Blake Hall, for the Ingham family, in 1839--a disastrous experience, and a position from which she was summarily dismissed.

Her second post as governess was for the Robinson family of Thorp Green Hall. After an initial period of difficulties, this experience went much better, and she was employed with the Robinsons for five years, from 1840 to 1845. (Anne helped secure her brother, Branwell, a role as tutor for the Robinson family--after he began a relationship with the wife, Lydia Robinson, he was dismissed, and Anne resigned.)

Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an extraordinarily successful novel--its initial printing, in June 1848, sold out in a few weeks after it appeared. In August, a second edition was published incorporating many of Anne's corrections of typographical errors in the first printing.

The novel's focus on the plight of women in the nineteenth century was--and remains--shocking. The novel's heroine, Helen Graham, is married to a violent and abusive alcoholic. In violation of the law, which makes it illegal for a woman to leave her husband, she leaves her marriage and tries to live her own, independent life.

The difficult material of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was noted by many critics, including Anne's sister, Charlotte. Even before her Anne’s death, Charlotte Bronte wrote to the editor William Smith Williams (who worked for Charlotte's publisher at Smith, Elder), "That it [The Tenant of Wildfell Hall] had faults of execution, faults of art, was obvious, but faults of intention of feeling could be suspected by none who knew the writer. For my part, I consider the subject unfortunately chosen--it was one the author was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully. The simple and natural--quiet description and simple pathos--are, I think, Acton Bell's forte. I liked Agnes Grey better than the present work."

After Anne's death, Charlotte prevented republication of the novel. On 15 September 1850,  she wrote to Williams, "Wildfell Hall it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." 

The novel was not republished until 1854, shortly before Charlotte's death, and then in a severely edited version that removed anything that might be considered objectionable. This "mutilated text" remained the edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall until 1992, when Oxford University Press restored Anne's original edition, with the corrections she made to the second edition.

Update, 1 October 2021: The BBC Radio Program In Our Time has produced an episode on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. To listen to the podcast version, click here.