Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

  CHAPTER XVI

  Mrs. Gaskell

  Ever since Eve gave Adam of the forbidden fruit, "and he did eat," therelative position of the sexes has rankled in the heart of man. The sonsof Adam proclaim loudly that they were given dominion over the earth andall that the earth contained; but they have been ever ready to followblindly the beckoning finger of some fair daughter of Eve. Perhaps it isa consciousness of this domination of the weaker sex that has led man toproclaim in such loud tones his mastery over woman, having some doubtsof its being recognised by her unless asserted in bold language. At atime when the novels of women received as warm a welcome from the publicand as large checks from the publishers as those of men, a writer whosesex need not be given thus discussed their relative merits:

  "What is woman, regarded as a literary worker? Simply an inferioranimal, educated as an inferior animal. And what is man? He is asuperior being, educated by a superior being. So how can they ever beequal in that particular line?"

  Granted the premises, there can be but one conclusion.

  The perfect assurance with which men have asserted their own sufficiencyin all lines of art would be amusing if it had not been so disastrous indistorting and warping at least three of them: music, the drama, andprose fiction. As slow as the growth of spirituality, has been therecognition of woman's mental and moral power. It seems almostincredible that not many years ago only male voices were heard in placesof amusement. Deep, rich, full, and sonorous, no one disputes the beautyof the male chorus; but modern opera would be impossible without thesoprano and alto voices, and Madame Patti, Madame Sembrich, and MadameLehman have proved that in natural gifts and in the technique of artwomen are not inferior to their brethren.

  By the same slow process women have won recognition on the stage. Evenin Shakespeare's time men saw no reason why women should acquire thehistrionic art. Imagine Juliet played by a boy! Yet Essex, Leicester,Southampton, in the boxes, the groundlings in the pit, and Ben Jonsonsitting as critic of all, were well satisfied with it, for they wereused to it, just as men have accepted the heroines of their own novels,though every woman they meet is a refutation of their truth. It onlyneeded a woman in a woman's part to open the eyes of the audience to allthey had missed before. Not until the Restoration, did any woman appearon the English stage. The following lines given in the prologue writtenfor the revival of _Othello_, in which the part of Desdemona was actedfor the first time by a woman, show how quick critics were to see thefolly of the old custom:

  For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen, With bone so large, and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter Giant.

  As we cannot conceive of the English stage without such women as Mrs.Siddons, Charlotte Cushman, and Ellen Terry, so we cannot conceive ofthe English novel without such writers as Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen,Mary Mitford, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot, each oneof whom carried some phase of the novel to so high a point that she hasstood pre-eminent in her own particular line. Too often we confuse artwith its subject-matter. If it requires as much skill to give interestto the everyday occurrences of the home as to the thrilling adventuresabroad; to depict the life of women as the life of men; to reveal thejoys and sorrows of a woman's heart as the exultations and griefs ofman's; then these women deserve a place equal to that held byRichardson, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray. Their art, as theirsubject-matter, is different. With the exception of George Eliot, theyhave not virility with its strength and power, but they have femininity,no less strong and powerful, a quality possessed by Scott, but by noother of these masculine writers, with the possible exception ofDickens, and in him it is a femininity, which tends to run tosentimentalism, a different characteristic.

  * * * * *

  Elizabeth Gaskell, one of the most feminine of writers, is so well knownas the author of _Cranford_, that delightful village whose onlygentleman dies early in the story, that many of its readers do not knowthat its author was better known by her contemporaries through herhumanitarian novels; in which she discussed the great problems that facethe poor.

  Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Stevenson, was born in Chelsea in1810. She spent the greater part of her childhood and girlhood at thehome of her mother's family, Knutsford in Cheshire, the place sheafterward made famous under the name of Cranford. In 1832, she marriedthe Reverend William Gaskell, minister of the Unitarian chapel inManchester, and that city became her home. She took an active interestin all the affairs of the city, and constantly visited the poor. Herhusband's father, besides being the professor of English History andLiterature in Manchester New College, a Unitarian institution, was amanufacturer; thus Mrs. Gaskell had the opportunity of hearing bothsides of the controversy which was then waging between labour andcapital.

  In the early forties, there was much suffering among the "mill-hands";many were dying of starvation, and consequently there were many strikesand uprisings. These conditions led to her writing her first novel,_Mary Barton_. The book was written during the years 1845-1847, althoughit was not published until 1848. The nucleus of it, Mrs. Gaskell wroteto a friend, was John Barton. Since she herself was constantly wonderingat the inequalities of fortune, which permitted some to starve, whileothers had abundance, how must it affect an ignorant man, himself on theverge of starvation, and filled with pity for the sufferings of hisfriends? Driven almost insane by the condition of society, and hoping toremedy it, he commits a crime, which preys so upon his conscience thatit finally wears out his own life.

  Mrs. Gaskell in this, her first novel, has left an undying picture ofthat section of smoky Manchester where the mill-workers live: itsnarrow lanes; small but not uncomfortable cottages, well supplied withfurniture in days when work was plentiful, but destitute even of a firewhen it was scarce; the undersized men and women, with irregularfeatures, pale blue eyes, sallow complexions, but with an intelligencerendered quick and sharp by their life among the machinery, and by theirhard struggle for existence. The life of the poor had often furnished atheme for the poets, but it was the life of shepherds and milkmaids,above whom the blue sky arched, and whose labours were brightened by thesongs of the birds, and the colours and sweet odours of fruit andflowers. But Mrs. Gaskell described the life of the poor in a town wherefactory smoke obscured the light of the sun, and where the weariness oflabour was rendered more intense by the clanging factory bell, and theconstant whirr of machinery ringing in their ears. It is a gloomypicture, but no gloomier than the reality.

  Disraeli in _Sybil_ discussed the questions of labour and capital intheir relations to the history of England, with a broad intellectualgrasp of the sociological causes which produced these conditions. Hewrote in the interests of two classes, the Crown and the People, withthe hope that England might again have a free monarchy and a prosperouspeople. It is a well illustrated treatise on government, but theprinciples advocated or discussed always overshadow the characters. Hehad no such intimate knowledge of the lives of the poor as had Mrs.Gaskell. She conducts us to the homes of John Barton, George Wilson, andJob Legh, shows the simplicity of their lives, and their sense of theinjustice under which they are suffering, and their helpfulness to eachother in times of need.

  How simple and true is the friendship that binds Mary Barton, thedressmaker's apprentice; Margaret, the blind singer; and Alice Wilson,the aged laundress, whose mind is constantly dwelling on the greenfields and running brooks of her childhood's home. These women possessthe strength of character of the early Teutonic women. They arereticent, not given to the exchange of confidences, but ready to help afriend with all they have in the hour of need. When Margaret thinks thatthe Bartons are in want of money, she says to Mary, "Remember, if you'resore pressed for money, we shall take it very unkind if you do not letus know." But she does not question her. Later when her great troublecomes to Mary Barton, which she must bear alone, when she must free alover from the charge of murder without incriminating her father, she
shows presence of mind, clearness of vision, and both moral and physicalcourage.

  Jem Wilson, the hero of the story, is as strong as Mary Barton, theheroine. Although Dickens was writing of the poor, he always found somemeans to educate his heroes, and generally placed them among gentlemen.Jem Wilson's education was received in the factory, and the little risehe made above his fellows was due to his better understanding ofmachinery. He was a working man, proud of his skill, and of his goodname for honesty and sobriety.

  The plot of _Mary Barton_ is highly melodramatic, and its technique isopen to criticism. It should not be read, however, for the story, butfor the many home scenes in which we come into close sympathy with themen and women of Manchester. There is no novel in which we feel morestrongly the heart-beats of humanity. It leaves the impression, not ofart, but of life.

  Mrs. Gaskell turned again to the struggles between labour and capitalfor the plot of her novel _North and South_. Between this story and_Mary Barton_ she had written _Cranford_ and _Ruth_, but her mind seemedto revert, as it were, from the peaceful village life to the stirringmill-towns of Lancashire. The great contrast between life in thecounties of England presided over by the landed gentry, and that in thecounties where the manufacturers formed the aristocracy, suggested thisbook. It was published in 1855, seven years after _Mary Barton_. Theplot of _North and South_ is better proportioned than is that of _MaryBarton_. There are fewer characters, better contrasted. It is a brighterpicture, with more humour, but it does not leave so strong an impressionon the mind as does the earlier work. Both, however, are more accuratethan _Hard Times_, a book with which Dickens himself was highlydissatisfied. He knew little of the life in the manufacturing districts,but, in a spirit of indignation at the poverty brought on by graspingmanufacturers, he caricatured the entire class in the persons of Mr.Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. When these men are compared with themanufacturers as represented in _North and South_, Mrs. Gaskell's moreintimate knowledge of them is at once apparent.

  Mrs. Gaskell had been accused of taking sides with the working men, andrepresenting their point of view in _Mary Barton_. In _North and South_,the hero, Mr. Thornton, is a rich manufacturer, a fine type of theself-made man, but standing squarely on his right to do what he pleasesin his own factory. "He looks like a person who would enjoy battlingwith every adverse thing he could meet with--enemies, winds, orcircumstances," was Margaret Hale's comment when she first met him."He's worth fighting wi', is John Thornton," said one of the leaders ofthe strike. For although the condition of affairs in the mill-towns hadmuch improved since John Barton went to London as a delegate from hisstarving townsmen, and was refused a hearing by Parliament, a large partof the book is concerned with the story of a strike, which in itsoutcome brought starvation to many of the men, and bankruptcy to some ofthe masters, the acknowledged victors.

  Higgins, one of the leaders of the working men, is a true Lancashireman, and like Thornton, the leader of the masters, has many traits ofcharacter as truly American as English. His sturdy independence is wellshown in Margaret's first interview with him. The daughter of a vicar inthe south of England, she had been accustomed to call upon the poor inher father's parish. Learning that Higgins's daughter, Bessy, is ill sheexpresses her desire to call upon her. "I'm none so fond of havingstranger folk in my house," Higgins informs her, but he finally relentsand says, "Yo may come if yo like."

  But besides the conflict between the manufacturers and their employees,with which much of the book is concerned, there is the sharp contrastbetween the Hales, born and bred in the south of England, and themill-owners in whose society they are placed. Mr. Hale, indecisive,inactive, in whom thought is more powerful than reality, is as helplessas a child among these men of action, and utterly unable to cope withthe problems they are facing. Margaret, the refined daughter of a poorclergyman, is contrasted with the proud Mrs. Thornton, the mother of awealthy manufacturer, who would make money, not birth, the basis ofsocial distinctions. But Margaret is even better contrasted with thepoor factory girl, Bessy Higgins, who turns to her for help andsympathy. There is hardly a story of Mrs. Gaskell's which is not adornedby the friendship of the heroine for some other woman in the book.

  In both these novels, she taught that the only solution of the greatproblem of capital and labour was a recognition of the fact that theirinterests were identical, and that friendly intercourse was the onlymeans of breaking down the barrier that divided them.

  Mrs. Gaskell was so versatile, she touched upon so many problems ofhuman life, that it is almost impossible to summarise her work. _Ruth_considers the question of the girl who has been betrayed. Ruth is aspure as Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and like her is a victim ofcircumstances. A stranger who has taken her under her protection reportsthat Ruth is a widow, and Ruth passively acquiesces in the deception,hoping that her son may never know the disgrace of his birth. But thetruth comes to light, involving in temporary disgrace Ruth and her son,and the household of Mr. Benson, the dissenting minister whose home hadbeen her place of refuge. But Mrs. Gaskell is always optimistic. By hergood deeds, Ruth wins the love and honour of the entire community. Thisnovel was loudly assailed. It was claimed that Mrs. Gaskell had condonedimmorality, and it was considered dangerous teaching that good deedswere an atonement for such a sin. But if _Ruth_ found detractors, italso found warm admirers, who recognised the broader teachings of thestory. Mrs. Jameson wrote to Mrs. Gaskell:

  "I hope I do understand your aim--you have lifted up your voice against'that demoralising laxity of principle,' which I regard as the ulcerlying round the roots of society; and you have done it wisely and well,with a mingled courage and delicacy which excite at once my gratitudeand my admiration."

  The scene of _Sylvia's Lovers_ is laid in Whitby, at a time when thepress-gang was kidnapping men for the British navy. It is a story of theloves, jealousies, and sorrows of sailors, shopkeepers, and smallfarmers, among whom Sylvia moves as the central figure. Du Maurier, whoillustrated the second edition of this novel, was so charmed with theheroine that he named his daughter Sylvia for her. This story, like_Ruth_, has much of the sentimentalism so fashionable in the middle ofthe nineteenth century. The leading canon of criticism at that time wasthe power with which a writer could move the emotions of the reader, andthe novelist was expected either to convulse his readers with laughteror dissolve them into tears. There are many funny scenes in _Sylvia'sLovers_, but the key-note is pathos. Like many novels of Dickens, thereare death-bed scenes introduced only for the luxury of weeping oversorrows that are not real, and there are melodramatic situations as inher other books. Parts of this novel suggested to Tennyson the poem of_Enoch Arden_.

  But, however powerful may be the novels dealing with the questions thatdaily confront the poor, there is a perennial charm in the society ofpeople who dwell amid rural scenes. Mrs. Gaskell has written severalshort stories of the pastoral type. Such a story is _Cousin Phillis_. Itis a beautiful idyl and reminds one of the old pastorals in which ladiesand gentlemen played at shepherds and shepherdesses. Cousin Philliscooks, irons, reads Dante, helps the haymakers, falls in love, and mendsa broken heart, and is brave, true, and unselfish. Her father is whatone would expect from such a daughter. He cultivates his small farm,finds rest from his labours in reading, and neglects none of the manyduties which belong to him as the dissenting minister of a smallvillage.

  _Cranford_ and _Wives and Daughters_ have this in common, that the sceneof both is laid in the village of Knutsford. The former is a ramblingstory of events in two or three households, and of the social affairs inwhich all the village is concerned. It is without doubt the favourite ofMrs. Gaskell's novels. _Wives and Daughters_ was Mrs. Gaskell's laststory, and was left unfinished at her death. It shows a great artisticadvance over her earlier work. The plot is more natural; it has not somany sharp contrasts, which George Eliot criticised in Mrs. Gaskell'sstories. The characters are also more subtle. Molly, the daughter of thevillage doctor, is an unselfish, thoughtful girl, but with none of that
unreal goodness which Dickens sometimes gave to his heroines. When shereceives her first invitation to a child's party, and her father iswondering whether or not she can go, her speech is characteristic of hernature:

  "Please, Papa,--I do wish to go--but I don't care about it."

  Molly feels very keenly, and longs for things with all the strength ofan ardent nature, but she always subordinates herself and her wishes toothers. In the character of Cynthia, Mrs. Gaskell makes a plea for theheartless coquette. Cynthia is beautiful, she likes to please those inwhose company she finds herself, but quickly forgets the absent. It isnot her fault that young men's hearts are brittle, for it is as naturalfor her to smile, and be gay and forget, as it is for Molly to love, besilent, and remember. So it is Cynthia who has the lovers, while Mollyis neglected. Clare, Cynthia's mother, is more selfish than herdaughter, but she has learned the art of seeming to please others whilethinking only of pleasing herself. She is as crafty as Becky Sharp, butsofter, more feline, and more subtle; a much commoner type in real lifethan Thackeray's diplomatic heroine.

  Mr. A. W. Ward, in the biographical introduction to the KnutsfordEdition of her novels, says of her later work:

  "When Mrs. Gaskell had become conscious that if true to herself, to herown ways of looking at men and things, to the sympathies and hopes withwhich life inspired her, she had but to put pen to paper, she found whatit has been usual to call her later manner--the manner of which_Cranford_ offered the first adequate illustration, and of which _CousinPhillis_ and _Wives and Daughters_ represent the consummation."

  The same critic compares the later work of Mrs. Gaskell with the laterwork of George Sand and finds that "in their large-heartedness" they aresimilar. He also gives George Sand's tribute to her Englishcontemporary. "Mrs. Gaskell," she said, "has done what neither I norother female writers in France can accomplish: she has written novelswhich excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and yet whichevery girl will be the better for reading."

  It is not often that a novelist finds another writer to take up andenlarge her work as did Mrs. Gaskell. Her novels contain the germ ofmuch of George Eliot's earlier writings. _The Moorland Cottage_suggested many parts of _The Mill on the Floss_. Edward and MaggieBrown--the former important, consequential and dictatorial, the latterself-forgetful, eager to help others, and by her very eagerness prone toblunders--were developed by George Eliot into the characters of Tom andMaggie Tulliver. The weak and fretful mothers in the two books are muchalike, while the love story and the catastrophe have the same generaloutline.

  They both drew largely from the working people of the North or of theMidlands, and both constantly introduced Dissenters. Silas Marnerbelongs to the manufacturing North, and the people of Lantern Yard areof the same class as those of Manchester and Milton. Felix Holt and AdamBede belong to the same type as Jem Wilson and Mr. Thornton, whileEsther Lyon is not unlike Margaret Hale. Both often presented life fromthe point of view of the poor.

  Both were interested in the development of character, and in thechanges which it underwent for good or evil under the influence ofoutward circumstances. But George Eliot had greater intellectual powerthan Mrs. Gaskell. She had the broader view and the deeper insight. Mrs.Gaskell could never have conceived the plots nor the characters of_Romola_ nor _Middlemarch_. She constantly introduced extraneous matterto shape her plots according to her will, while with George Eliot thefate of character is as hard and unyielding as was the fate ofpredestination in the sermons of the old Calvinistic divines. Mrs.Gaskell, like Dickens, introduced death-bed scenes merely to play uponthe emotions. George Eliot was never guilty of this defect; with her,character is a fatalism that is inexorable.

  But Mrs. Gaskell had a more hopeful view of life than had George Eliot.The Unitarians believe in man and have faith in the clemency of God.This makes them a cheerful people. However dark the picture that Mrs.Gaskell paints, we have faith that conditions will soon be better, andat the close of the book we see the dawn of a brighter day. George Eliothad taken the suggestions of Mrs. Gaskell and amplified them with manydetails that the woman of lesser genius had omitted. But to each wasgiven her special gift. If George Eliot's characters stand out as moredistinct personalities, they are drawn with less sympathy. GeorgeEliot's men and women are often hard and sharp in outline; Mrs.Gaskell's, no matter how poor or ignorant, are softened and refined.

  It was this quality that made it possible for her to write thatinimitable comedy of manners, _Cranford_. Her other novels with theirdeep pathos, strong passion, and dramatic situations must be read toshow the breadth of her powers, but _Cranford_ will always give itsauthor a unique place in literature. Imagine the material that furnishedthe groundwork of this story put into the hands of any novelist fromRichardson to Henry James. It seems almost like sacrilege to think whateven Jane Austen might have said of these dear elderly ladies. As forThackeray, their little devices to keep up appearances would have seemedto him instances of feminine deceit, and he might have put even MissJenkyns with her admiration of Dr. Johnson into his _Book of Snobs_.What tears Dickens would have drawn from our eyes over the love story ofMiss Matty and Mr. Holbrook. How George Eliot would have mourned overthe shallowness of their lives. Henry James would have squinted at themand their surroundings through his eye-glass until he had discoveredevery faded spot on the carpet or skilful darn in the curtain. MissMitford would have appreciated these ladies and loved them as did Mrs.Gaskell, only she would have been so interested in the flowers andbirds and clouds that she would have forgotten all about the Cranfordparties, and would probably have ignored the presence in their midst ofthe Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, the sister-in-law of an earl. So we mustconclude that only Mrs. Gaskell could make immortal this village offemininity, where to be a man was considered almost vulgar, but intowhich she has introduced one of the most chivalrous gentlemen in theperson of Captain Browne, and one of the most faithful of lovers in theperson of Mr. Holbrook, while no book has a more lovable heroine thanfluttering, indecisive Miss Matty, over whose fifty odd years thesorrows of her youth have cast their lengthening shadows.

  _Mary Barton_ is a work of genius. Only a woman of high ideals couldhave drawn the character of Margaret Hale, an earlier Marcella, or MollyGibson, or Mr. Thornton, or Mr. Holman. Only a woman of deep insightcould have created a woman like Ruth: a book which in its problem andits deep earnestness reminds one of _Aurora Leigh_. But her readers willalways love Mrs. Gaskell for the sake of the gentle ladies of_Cranford_.