March 22, 2017 by sydneyreadseverything

How Fear of Female Sexuality Can Ruin Everyone’s Life

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell, 1865

Once upon a time, a clever country doctor lost his young wife and had to raise his little daughter on his own. Dr. Gibson and little Molly get along quite well on their own. I mean “on their own” in the British sense, which includes a nanny/cook, a maid and a governess. Anyway, the father and daughter have a sweet and caring relationship. He teases her. She’s too young to understand his teasing, but she loves him and takes care of him as best she can after his long days riding through the country tending to rich and poor alike. Until one-day Dr. Gibson intercepts a love letter sent from one of his foolish interns to his sweet young daughter.

Sensible Dr. Gibson loses his mind. He can’t possibly TALK TO HIS DAUGHTER about love, sex, or romance. So, he resolves to get married as fast as he can so that his daughter’s sexuality will promptly become someone else’s problem. If you think dating is hard at your age in your city (I’m sorry. That’s rough. It’ll get better. Don’t settle.), consider Dr. Gibson’s circumstances. In his little village there are two types of people: nobles who wouldn’t deign to marry a country doctor and illiterate peasants. Given his rare social status as an educated, middle class man in 19^th century rural England, there’s only one person in town he could possibly marry, the noble family’s governess.

So he marries her. And she’s the worst. It turns out marrying based on class alone is a garbage idea. The new Mrs. Gibson is a selfish, frivolous, controlling hypocrite who makes herself comfortable at the expense of making everyone else miserable. She brings her charming, lovable, frivolous daughter, Cynthia, with her. Dr. Gibson acquired a wife to shepherd his daughter safely through the perils of young womanhood, a time at which young ladies might lose their character if unguided. Among the many ironies of this inconvenient marriage of convenience, the bitterest is that Molly nearly loses her character after becoming entangled in one of her step-sister’s messes. A mess Cynthia never would have been tied up in if her mother was a halfway decent person.

Men, for the love of all things decent, it is better to have an awkward conversation with your daughter about sex and/or love than to marry the closest woman in order to avoid that conversation.

What I have written is the briefest outline of the plot of Wives and Daughters; there’s a lot more to it. You will love Molly, Mr. Gibson and Cynthia. You will despise Mrs. Gibson. There are several romances to get invested in. There are so many more characters to love and laugh at.

Gaskell is a brilliant writer and this is possibly her finest book. She has an Austenesque ability to poke fun at her characters’ foibles and to make you root for their romances. If you love a funny, romantic period piece you will love Wives and Daughters. I know I mostly give positive reviews, but this book is among my favorites. I adore it. I didn’t know going in that Gaskell died before she finished writing this book and I actually cried a little when I got to the end. It felt like she died right that moment. It’s horrible to think that Molly’s story is unfinished. But Gaskell got quite far enough. The rest was going to be falling action anyway. It’s well worth reading in its unfinished form.

Before I sign off, I’d like to provide this quote to demonstrate Gaskell’s brilliant characterization of the horrible second Mrs. Gibson. The Gibson family has just learned that a certain child has recovered from life-threatening illness:

“I wonder how the poor little boy is?” said Molly, after a pause, speaking out her thought.

“’Poor little child! When one thinks how little his prolonged existence is to be desired, one feels that his death would be a boon.”

“Mamma! what do you mean?” asked Molly, much shocked. “Why, every one cares for his life as the most precious thing! You have never seen him! He is the bonniest, sweetest little fellow that can be! What do you mean?”

“I should have thought that the Squire would have desired a better-born heir than the offspring of a servant,—with all his ideas about descent and blood and family. And I should have thought that it was a little mortifying to Roger—who must naturally have looked upon himself as his brother’s heir—to find a little interloping child, half French, half English, stepping into his shoes!”

“You don’t know how fond they are of him,—the Squire looks upon him as the apple of his eye.”

“Molly! Molly! pray don’t let me hear you using such vulgar expressions. When shall I teach you true refinement—that refinement which consists in never even thinking a vulgar, commonplace thing! Proverbs and idioms are never used by people of education. ‘Apple of his eye!’ I am really shocked.”’

This woman just declared that it would have been preferable for a child to die, then she pretends to be shocked at the vulgarity of a cliché. One person in this conversation is vulgar, unrefined and generally wretched. It is not Molly. That piece of dialogue perfectly exemplifies her character. You will love to hate her. You will shake your fists at Dr. Gibson for marrying her.

You might like Wives and Daughters if:

you’ve read every Jane Austen book and you just want more. Really, it’s very Austenesque. More so than Gaskell’s other books which are a bit grittier and more tragic with harder hitting social commentary.

You might not like Wives and Daughters if:

you’re a soulless goblin.

Final Thoughts: I’ve read it three times and I’ll read it again. This book is so well written. So charming. So incisive. So wonderful. It’s a damn good piece of writing. Elizabeth Gaskell forever. She is my queen. George Eliot has been dethroned. Gaskell! Gaskell! Gaskell! Honestly, if you haven’t read something by Gaskell, stop considering yourself a well-read person. Try Ruth or North and South or Wives and Daughters. You won’t regret it.

September 15, 2015 by sydneyreadseverything

North and South, or Love and Capitalism, or Obedience and Hell No, Not Gonna

North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855

If you read my recent review of Ruth, you already know that Elizabeth Gaskell has no time for correct, moral Victorian thinking. True to form, in North and South, Gaskell depicts characters who refuse to conform. Rascally rebels with hearts of gold. They do the right thing by their own moral standards. Yay! Fun! No, not fun. Social scorn, loss of status, risk to self and family. But, fun for the reader!

Can we talk for a minute about Elizabeth Gaskell’s treatment within the canon? Do you read the introductions to classic novels? I’ll be honest, I usually read the first couple of paragraphs and skim the rest. Some fool named Alan Sutton wrote these sentences for his introduction to the Pocket Classics edition of Lois the Witch and Other Stories “Mrs. Gaskell (1810-1865) was first and foremost a woman of her time, a lady of Victorian expansiveness. She was not a brilliant, nor a passionate novelist like George Eliot or Charlotte Bronte, but an intelligent, compassionate and enthusiastic woman, whose life centered around her family.” Barf. Barf. Barf. Just barfed in my mouth a little. Excuse me Alan Sutton, but did you really create a dichotomy between women with families and brilliant authors? Really? Bronte and Eliot are passionate, but Gaskell is only enthusiastic? Probably because she was spending all her emotions on her children and husband. Ugh. Pardon me, I need to pause to roll my eyes several times.

Elizabeth Gaskell published under the name Mrs. Gaskell. Bronte and Eliot published under male pseudonyms. Bronte and Eliot did not have conventional families. Does it not seem like this is why Mr. Sutton chooses to relegate Gaskell to some lower tier of writer? Dickens had about 27 children, but judging by his grand position in the canon, had plenty of brilliance and passion left over for his novels. I could write pages about the utter worthlessness of those two sentences. Instead I will say this: I have now read all of Gaskell’s major works and all but one by her contemporary, George Eliot. Middlemarch by Eliot is perhaps my favorite Victorian novel, but I generally prefer Gaskell to Eliot. Yeah, I said it. In Ruth and North and South Gaskell bravely and PASSIONATELY skewers conventional Victorian morality. Meanwhile, Eliot wastes pages upon page of Adam Bede and Silas Marner in affectionate, but incredibly patronizing depictions of charming, rural, simple, superstitious country folk. Her condescending tone rubs my fur the wrong way and is frankly tiresome. I really never thought I would find a Victorian author I preferred to Eliot, but I did and it’s Elizabeth Gaskell.

That being said, Sally Shuttleworth wrote an introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of North and South that gives Gaskell her due. Shuttleworth examines the complexity of the gender, class, and community tensions depicted in the book. It’s a great introduction written by a person capable of seeing past the “Mrs” in Mrs. Gaskell. Shuttleworth is worth a million Suttons. Honestly, if you are interested in the 1,000 merits of Elizabeth Gaskell or North and South, you should pick up a copy and read Shuttleworth’s intro. It’s better than anything that I am about to write.

Let’s get back to business. The heroine of North and South is Margaret Hale. The daughter of a clergyman, Margaret is used to being about the highest ranking person in her tiny town in the south of England. Her father, the novel’s first rebel, resigns from his job, because he objects to some point of doctrine that the Church of England insists he must preach. His little family cannot understand why Mr. Hale must take this stand against the Church, but he feels he must. So, the Hales relocate from the green and sunny South to the smoky, industrial northern town of Milton. Margaret hates it. In fact, she’s a bit haughty and repulsed by the squalid environment and filthy, unmannered masses. Accustomed to deferential treatment, Margaret is frightened by the loud, boisterous crowds in Milton. She actually gets catcalled, “You may well smile, my lass; many a one would smile to have such a bonny face.” Yep, telling scared women to smile is at least as old as the 1850s.

Despite her initial revulsion, Margaret’s heart warms to the workers. She makes friends with a particular family and sees that their wages do not meet their basic needs. Margaret starts feeling very socialist and pro-union when she sees sick and starving Milton families. This feeling creates complications for M, because she must interact socially with the mill owner, Mr. Thornton. Sparks fly. Thornton is a self-made capitalist fatcat. Margaret is an uppity wannabe aristocrat who scorns trade. They really dislike each other, in a classic romcom way where they can’t stop thinking about each other and despite their better judgment feel certain tingles in certain unspeakable regions.

I really love Margaret, partially because she speaks angrily to capitalists at dinner parties just like me. The romance with Thornton is imperfect to me. He’s extra manly, somewhat scary, and uncompassionate. But, the heart wants what it wants. The romance is extra complicated, because Margaret sides with the workers who go on strike, wanting better wages from Thornton. As you can imagine, this drives Thornton crazy, in a sexy way.

You might like North and South if:

you loath capitalism.
you ruin social events by loudly loathing capitalism.
you secretly want to stop loathing capitalism and marry a petrochemical engineer. (Is that a type of engineer?)

You might not like North and South if:

you love Ayn Rand.

Final Thoughts: I loved it. The more I think about it, the more I love it. All hail Margaret Hale! Speak truth to power, Victorian heroines, speak truth to power.

July 16, 2015 by sydneyreadseverything

A Victorian Defense of Unwed Mothers

Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell, 1953

Today’s blog post comes with a real life embarrassing story!

I am with my mother and her friend enjoying the wild wonder of our cabin in West Virginia. Watching birds, looking at trees, tubing down the beautiful Cacapon River. Short of taking a trip to Wales, this is the perfect spot to get a picture for Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Poor Ruth, an unwed mother abandoned by her lover, tries to kill herself by jumping into a Welsh river. To get the shot, I need to position myself on the opposite bank from the photographer, so he can get both me and the river in the frame. So, I put my Victorian dress and shawl in my backpack and, against Mom’s protests that the current is too strong, start the arduous process of wading across the shallow part of our rocky little river.

Arriving safely on the other side, I scramble around the banks until I get as close to both the rapids and the photographer as possible. I put the dress and shawl on over my summer clothes and start trying to look forlorn and suicidal. A few minutes later, I am pretty confident I have something usable. Time to take some risk, try something different. “What else should I do?” I shout across the river to my Mom and her friend.

“Bend your knees! Look at the water!” Mom shouts back, her voice just barely reaching me over the rushing river.

Ever ready to oblige, I bend down as if poised to jump. As I stare intently into the churning current, I feel my left foot start to slip on the wet, algae-coated rock. “No! Don’t slip. You can get your balance back,” I tell myself, but my foot slides down the back of the rock into the water and my body inevitably follows. In my desperate attempt to stay grounded, I have fallen in a pike position, butt nestled in a me-sized cradle of rock, hands and feet poking out of the water.

Hauling myself out, I truly feel the discomfort of sopping wet Victorian garb, including many feet of knitted shawl.

Seeing my genuinely forlorn expression, my mom tells her friend to keep taking pictures.

And that is the story of how I fell in the river in Victorian clothing.

Ruth, the eponymous anti-heroine, also survived her aquatic misadventure. Her benefactor, Thurston, finds her and takes her away from the river before she can fulfill her plan. He and his sister continue to care for Ruth. They help her to see her baby as her chance for redemption and grace. They even convince her to join them in their provincial home, disguised as a widow.

Gaskell chose to write Thurston as a dissenting minister with a physical disability. She characterizes him a man of strong religious and moral conviction, an outsider whose perspective enables him to recognize the folly of conventional thinking. He convinces his sister that while lying is sinful, shutting an erring human out from all human sympathy and (Christian?) kindness is the greater evil.

Writing at a time when women lost “respectability” by even mentioning the name of a “fallen woman,” when unwed mothers were turned out of their family homes to languish and die in poorhouses, Gaskell skewers prejudiced behavior towards unwed mothers. She shows poor Ruth as an orphaned young woman working in harsh conditions as a seamstress, with no one to guide her into adulthood. No one to explain what female behavior was acceptable and what lead to ruin. As Gaskell states “she was too young when her mother died to have received any cautions or words of advice concerning the subject of a woman’s life.”

Lonely, she accepts the friendship of a handsome young gentleman, Mr. Bellingham. Desperate for a glimpse of the familiar spot where she was once so happy, she agrees to accompany him to her old family home. Ruth’s employer happens to see her and Mr. Bellingham together and casts Ruth out with absolutely no one to turn to but…Mr. Bellingham.

(Sometimes I have a glass of wine while I write posts. This post is long, so right about here I had two.)

Innocent little Ruth ends up living with Bellingham as a fallen woman, because what the hell else was she supposed to do at that point? They go on vacation in Wales, where they won’t be recognized. Eventually, B’s mother shows up and does what any good mother would do: convinces her son to abandon his now pregnant lover. Now, Bellingham has a life of luxury and hedonism ahead of him and is free to marry any damn Miss Darcy he happens to run across (but he stays in love with Ruth forever, because she’s perfect). Meanwhile, Ruth is doomed to live as an impoverished pariah with no hope of providing a life worth living to her unborn child. Because, misogyny. This is when she starts to think that the bottom of the river might be the best place for her.

Fortunately for Ruth, kindhearted, farsighted, wonderful Thurston prevents her suicide and slowly persuades her that God will forgive her and she can still lead a meaningful life full of whatever kind of approval it is that Christians seek.

Ruth lives for her child, and loves him with the same love as married women. Cuz love doesn’t know what documents are down at the courthouse, y’all.

Later in the novel, a friend of Ruth’s finds out Ruth’s secret. She is tempted to tell, because she is jealous of the attention her suitor pays to beautiful Ruth. But, she realizes that she had advantages in life that Ruth didn’t have and the same thing could have easily happened to her if their positions were reversed. That’s right, a Victorian character checked her privilege. Compassion triumphed over jealousy, because Elizabeth Gaskell is a queen.

Ruth becomes celebrated in her tiny town for bravely tending to very sick patients, with no concern for her own safety from infection. Wait, I was just going to tell you the ending, but no! You should read it! The ending is fucked up, though. You will cry.

You might like Ruth if:

a human heart beats inside your chest.
you love a tale of redemption.
you like Tyrion Lannister, but wish he didn’t have to exist in a miserable, sadistic world. Seriously, Thurston reminds me of Tyrion, if Tyrion wasn’t subjected to a world of shit.
you love social criticism.

You might not like Ruth if:

you hate unwed mothers.

Final thoughts:

Ultimately, this book is a vindication of individual morality and forgiveness over hive-mind prejudice and hate. Yes! The kind of book that makes my heart contract with sympathy, empathy and envy. Sympathy for women, because it takes two to make an unwed mother, but only one pays the price. Sympathy because the price was so disproportionately harsh. Empathy with the author who saw a deep, searing flaw in society cause unnecessary suffering and sought to express the iniquity in the form of a novel. Envy because she did it so well and I will never write such a book as Ruth. This book makes me want to SWF Elizabeth Gaskell. I want to go back in time and become her. This book. Sometimes I just rub the pages on my cheek; that’s how much affection I have for this book. Totally worth falling in a river for. I love you, Ruth.