| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
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| Biography: Elizabeth Gaskell |
The English author Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) wrote sociological novels that explored the ills of industrial England and novels of small-town life that are penetrating studies of character.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born on Sept. 29, 1810. Her mother died shortly thereafter, and she was sent to live with an aunt in Knutsford, a village in Cheshire. At the age of 15 she went to school at Stratford-on-Avon, where she remained for 2 years. She married the Reverend William Gaskell on Aug. 30, 1832.
The couple settled in industrial Manchester. There Elizabeth observed the extreme hardship of the workers and their struggles with the owners for a greater share in the profits of the mills. Her observations provided much of the background for Mary Barton (1848), her first novel. It was begun in 1845 to relieve her grief at the death of William, her fifth child and only son, and completed during intervals in a busy family life. It centers on a sensational murder but was written with the serious purpose of pointing out what John Barton, Mary's father, called the "right way" to remedy the ills of the workers. This is essentially a change of heart in worker and owner alike. The novel was both praised and damned, but it was an immediate success.
Because of Mary Barton Gaskell was asked to contribute stories to Charles Dickens's magazine Household Words. "Lizzie Leigh," which dealt with illicit love and illegitimacy, appeared in the first issue. Its themes were developed in Ruth (1853), in which Gaskell again called for a change of heart in the public.
Then Gaskell turned from the sociological novel to the novel of village life. Sketches which had appeared in Household Words were published as Cranford (1853). Drawn from the people and scenes known during her childhood in Knutsford, Cranford was far less sensational than her earlier books but no less interesting. The humorously depicted incidents and sharply observed characters capture the attention today as in the 19th century.
In North and South (1855) Gaskell returned to the sociological novel. Then, because of her friendship with Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell wrote The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). She was quite unlike the intensely introspective Charlotte but extremely sympathetic to her. Though the book did not tell the whole truth about Brontë's life, it was a remarkably revealing biography.
After the biography came Sylvia's Lovers (1863), a historical novel, and Wives and Daughters (1866), a novel of life in a quiet country town. Unfinished at her death, Wives and Daughters is Gaskell's most mature treatment of character. She died on Nov. 12, 1865.
Further Reading
The major biographical study of Mrs. Gaskell is Annette B. Hopkins, Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Works (1952). Additional information appears in The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell (1966), edited by Arthur Pollard and J. A. V. Chapple. Sound criticism and a biographical sketch are in Pollard's Mrs. Gaskell, Novelist and Biographer (1966).
Additional Sources
Bonaparte, Felicia, The gypsy-bachelor of Manchester: the life of Mrs. Gaskell's demon, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
Brodetsky, Tessa, Elizabeth Gaskell, Leamington, Spa: Berg, 1986.
Gerin, Winifred, Elizabeth Gaskell: a biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
Payne, George Andrew, Mrs. Gaskell: a brief biography, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1976.
Uglow, Jennifer S., Elizabeth Gaskell: a habit of stories, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993.
Whitfield, Archie Stanton, Mrs. Gaskell, her life and work, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1978.
| Fairy Tale Companion: Elizabeth Gaskell |
Gaskell, Elizabeth (married name of Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson 1810–65)English novelist, short‐story writer and biographer of Charlotte Brontë. She was a keen storyteller and lover of ghost stories. Charles Dickens referred to her as his ‘dear Scheherazade’, and many of her short stories were published in his magazines Household Words and All the Year Round. Her fairy‐tale‐inspired short stories include ‘Curious if True’ (1860), in which an Englishman tracing his ancestry in France comes across a château full of strangely familiar guests, each of whom appears to be a realistic version of a fairy‐tale character. Of her novels, Wives and Daughters (1864–6), left unfinished at her death, is most explicit in its use of fairy tales.
— Stephen Benson
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Cleghorn (Stevenson) Gaskell |
Bibliography
See her letters, ed. by J. A. V. Chapple and A. Pollard (1966); biographies by A. Pollard (1966), G. De W. Sanders (1929, repr. 1971), A. B. Hopkins (1952, repr. 1971), W. Gérin (1976), P. Stoneman (1987), and J. Uglow (1993); studies by K. C. Shrivastava (1977) and E. L. Duthie (1980).
| Quotes By: Elizabeth Gaskell |
Quotes:
"People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues."
"Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom."
"How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!"
"To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!"
"A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease."
"My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal a feeling."
See more famous quotes by
Elizabeth Gaskell
| Wikipedia: Elizabeth Gaskell |
| Elizabeth Gaskell | |
|---|---|
 Elizabeth Gaskell, in the 1832 miniature by William John Thomson |
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| Born | Elizabeth Stevenson 29 September 1810 Chelsea, London |
| Died | 12 November 1865 (aged 55) Holybourne, Hampshire |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Writing period | 1848–1865 |
| Spouse(s) | William Gaskell |
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Brontë. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature.[1]
Contents |
Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson on 29 September 1810, at 93 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which was then on the outskirts of London. Gaskell was the eighth and last of her parents' children, the only one except the first-born, John (born 1806), to survive infancy. Her father, William Stevenson, was a Scottish Unitarian minister at Failsworth, near Oldham, but resigned his orders on conscientious grounds, moving his family to London in 1806 with intention of going to India after he had been named private secretary to the Earl of Lauderdale, who was to become Governor-General of India. This position did not materialise and Stevenson was instead nominated Keeper of the Treasury Records. Stevenson's wife, Elizabeth Holland, came from a prominent Midlands family that was well connected with other Unitarian and prominent families like the Wedgwoods, the Turners and the Darwins, and when she died three months after giving birth to Gaskell she left a bewildered husband who saw no other alternative for young Elizabeth but to be sent away to live with her mother's sister Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire.[2]
While growing up Gaskell's future was very uncertain as she had no personal wealth, and no firm home, even though she was a permanent guest at her aunt and grandparents' house. Her father had married again to Catherine Thomson in 1814 and the couple had a male heir, William (born 1815) and a daughter, Catherine (born 1816). Although Gaskell would sometimes spend several years without seeing her father and his new family, her older brother John would often visit her in Knutsford. John had been early destined for the Royal Navy, like his grandfathers and uncles, but he had no entry and had to go into the Merchant Navy with the East India Company's fleet.[3] John went missing in 1827 during an expedition to India.
Much of Elizabeth's childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with her aunt Hannah Lumb in Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as Cranford. They lived in a large red brick house, Heathwaite, on Heathside (now Gaskell Avenue), which faces the large open area of Knutsford Heath.
She also spent some time in Newcastle upon Tyne (with Rev. William Turner's family) and in Edinburgh. Her stepmother was a sister of the Scottish miniature artist, William John Thomson, who painted the famous 1832 portrait of Gaskell in Manchester. Also during this period, Gaskell met and married William Gaskell, the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, who had a literary career of his own. They spent their honeymoon in North Wales, staying with Elizabeth's uncle, Samuel Holland, who lived near Porthmadog.
The Gaskells settled in Manchester, where the industrial surroundings would offer inspiration for her novels (in the industrial genre). They had several children: a stillborn daughter in 1833, followed by Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily (1837), known as Meta, Florence Elizabeth (1842), William (1844-1845), and Julia Bradford (1846). Her daughter Florence married a barrister, Charles Crompton, in 1862.
They rented a villa in Plymouth Grove in 1850, after the publication of Gaskell's first novel, and Gaskell lived in the house with her family until her death 15 years later.[4] All of Gaskell's books except one were written at Plymouth Grove, while her husband held welfare committees and tutored the poor in his study. The circles in which the Gaskells moved included literary greats, religious dissenters, and social reformers, including William and Mary Howitt. Visitors to Plymouth Grove included Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Harriet Beecher Stowe and American writer Charles Eliot Norton, while conductor Charles Hallé lived close by and taught the piano to one of Gaskell's four daughters. Close friend Charlotte Brontë is known to have stayed there three times, and on one occasion hid behind the drawing room curtains as she was too shy to meet Gaskell's visitors.[5]
Gaskell died in Holybourne, Hampshire in 1865, aged 55. The house on Plymouth Grove remained in the Gaskell family until 1913.
Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. The best known of her remaining novels are Cranford (1853), North and South (1854), and Wives and Daughters (1865). She became popular for her writing, especially her ghost stories, aided by her friend Charles Dickens, who published her work in his magazine Household Words. Her ghost stories are quite distinct, in the "Gothic" vein, from her industrial fiction.
Even though her writing conforms to Victorian conventions (including signing her name "Mrs. Gaskell"), Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of contemporary attitudes, particularly those toward women, with complex narratives and dynamic female characters.[6]
In addition to her fiction, Gaskell also wrote the first biography of Charlotte Brontë, which played a significant role in developing her fellow writer's reputation.
Unitarianism urges comprehension and tolerance toward all religions and, even though Gaskell tried to keep her own beliefs hidden, she felt strongly about these values, which permeated her works--as in North and South, where "Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm".[7][8]
Gaskell's style is notable for putting local dialect words into the voice of middle-class characters and of the narrator. For example, in North and South Margaret Hale suggests redding up (tidying) the Bouchers' house and even offers jokingly to teach her mother words such as knobstick (strike-breaker).[9] Her husband collected Lancashire dialect, and Gaskell defended her use of dialect as expressing otherwise inexpressible concepts in an 1854 letter to Walter Savage Landor:
:'...you will remember the country people's use of the word "unked". I can't find any other word to express the exact feeling of strange unusual desolate discomfort, and I sometimes "potter" and "mither" people by using it.'[10][9]
She used the dialect word "nesh" (soft), which goes back to Old English, in Mary Barton:
"Sit you down here: the grass is well nigh dry by this time; and you're neither of you nesh folk about taking cold."[11]
and later in 'The Manchester Marriage' [1858]:
"Now, I'm not above being nesh for other folks myself. I can stand a good blow, and never change colour; but, set me in the operating-room in the Infirmary, and I turn as sick as a girl." "At Mrs Wilson's death, Norah came back to them, as nurse to the newly-born little Edwin; into which post she was not installed without a pretty strong oration on the part of the proud and happy father; who declared that if he found out that Norah ever tried to screen the boy by a falsehood, or to make him nesh either in body or mind, she should go that very day."[12]
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