Elizabeth Gaskell

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-145
Author(s):  
Andrew Mangham
Keyword(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Subjective Interpretation ◽  
Demographic Theory ◽  
North And South

This chapter focuses on Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848), North and South (1854–5), and Sylvia’s Lovers (1863). These works confirm Kingsley’s suspicion that a material view of starvation—and poverty more generally—offers a reasonable and reasoning interpretation of the Condition-of-England question. Starvation, or ‘clemming’, as it was known among the industrial working classes, refuses to be integrated, in Gaskell’s fictional world, into a catch-all economic or demographic theory. Instead, it is a phenomenon that paradoxically demands confrontation while evading perception through the anatomies of the workers and their surroundings. In line with the interlinking findings of biological scientists and Unitarian thinkers, Gaskell broaches the intricate questions of reform by recasting them as flesh-and-blood issues experienced through the eyes of her heroines; her novels thus ask for the sort of careful consideration advocated by science, whereby the strengths and weaknesses of subjective interpretation are tested and interpreted through the material.

scholarly journals So you've heard of the Gaskell medal: but who was Gaskell?

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-188
Author(s):  
Digby Tantam
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Social Club ◽  
North And South

The benefaction for the award of an annual medal and prize to a member of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association was made by Mrs Elizabeth Holland, in memory of her brother, Samuel. She was herself a remarkable woman, who married a banker, had ten children, translated poetry from the German, began a social club for unemployed men, founded a cottage hospital, and was well-known for her wit, conversation and unflappability. However, she came from a remarkable family. Her older brother, William, was a noted Unitarian minister, philanthropist, and writer. Her sister-in-law, William's wife, was Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell, author of North and South, Wives and Daughters, and a celebrated, and for a season notorious, Life of Charlotte Brontë, as well as several other novels and short stories. Two of Elizabeth and William's children, Meta and Julia, were so well-loved in Manchester that flags flew at half-mast on their deaths.

scholarly journals Mid-Victorian England and Female Emancipation: Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Saman Ali Mohammed
Keyword(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Apparent Difference ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
North And South ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Class Distinction

One of the heated discussions of the Victorian era is female emancipation. In the heart of an industrial period when materialism, economic competition and public domain were dominated by men, women had the domestic sphere. The apparent difference between these two spheres was not tolerable for Elizabeth Gaskell and she critiqued it. Her novel North and South discusses the perceptions on women, the idea of industrialization, and class distinction in Victorian Era. Developing her main character Margaret Hale, Gaskell critiques her society and the mentality behind a perception of patriarchal and materialistic society. Gaskell develops her character on many different levels by giving her various roles especially in the industrial north. Valuing certain qualities women possess in the domestic level, Gaskell brings Margaret to the debates, businesses, factories, riots and public sphere of Milton. Gaskell presents the contemporary and Victorian readers with a different perception of women, their roles, and significance in the private and public spheres. 

Commerce, Law, and Revolution in the Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Alison L. LaCroix
Keyword(s):  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
The World ◽  
Commerce Law ◽  
North And South

The 1840s and 1850s witnessed the publication of three great “condition of England” novels: Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855). All three novels examine the consequences of the Industrial Revolution in England, and all are critical in their appraisal of its effects on individuals, society, and the national—and even the international—realm. All three focus on the world of commerce and manufacturing, but the realm of law is never far away. Yet there are differences: in Shirley, Brontë delves into the interior lives of two very different female protagonists, while Gaskell’s narratives are more concerned with economic and social injustice. Brontë set Shirley during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s, a period of British imperial struggle and ultimate triumph. Gaskell placed the action of Mary Barton a decade prior to its writing, but in North and South she depicted her current moment, with a consequent sharpening of her critique. This essay examines the novels’ treatment of a set of interconnected themes: commerce, law, and revolution, with reference to related questions of politics, gender, and time.

Elizabeth Gaskell and the Habit of Serialisation

2019 ◽  
pp. 429-441
Author(s):  
Catherine Delafield
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Serial Publication ◽  
Serial Novel ◽  
Women's Novels ◽  
Periodical Publishing ◽  
North And South ◽  
Careful Comparison ◽  
Material Constraints

In this essay, Catherine Delafield highlights the importance of the literary periodical and the practice of serial publication for the form and content of women’s novels. By revisiting the original periodical publishing contexts of two novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1854–5), first published in Household Words (1850–9), and Wives and Daughters (1864–6), first serialised in the Cornhill Magazine (1860–1970), Delafield demonstrates Gaskell’s incisive understanding of the publishing conventions of the serial novel, even if she struggled with the artistic limitations of that form. A careful comparison of the periodical and volume versions of the novels yields the conclusion that the ‘structure and style of her novels’ were ‘formed in response to their periodical contexts,’ with Gaskell shown to not only be a diligent student of the serial but also an innovator of that form (p.429). Gaskell’s prominent place within the genealogy of the Victorian serial was not entirely without friction, however. As Delafield demonstrates, she actively challenged the interventions of her male editors, including Charles Dickens (1812–70), though not always successfully. In this sense, Gaskell’s ‘habit of serialisation’ was flavoured with both ‘conformity and instruction,’ given her willingness to work within and push the boundaries of the artistic and material constraints of the serial form (p.440).

scholarly journals ‘Frames of reference’ in Victorian England: What Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South reveals about perceptions of the employment relationship

2020 ◽  
pp. 002218562096051
Author(s):  
Michael Gold
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
North And South

Alan Fox’s conceptualisation of ‘unitary’, ‘pluralistic’ and subsequently ‘radical’ frames of reference has been outstandingly influential in the analysis of industrial relations and human resource management since the 1960s. This article demonstrates, however, that these distinctions long predate Fox even though he popularised the terminology. Evidence that observers used comparable frames of reference to categorise perceptions of the employment relationship goes back to the 1830s, and may be found in certain ‘condition-of-England’ novels that were set amid the social turbulence of the time. This article is based on close examination of one such novel, North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell. It informs our historical understanding of Fox’s concept of ‘frames of reference’ through exploration of the relationship between three characters who broadly represent employer (unitary), union (radical) and middle-class (pluralist) perspectives. Their discussions about industrial conflict raise dilemmas similar to those analysed in contemporary industrial relations literature: how to forge closer relationships between employers and workers through processes designed to nurture high-trust dynamics while remaining aware of the underlying power imbalances between the two sides resulting from social inequalities of class and wealth.

Revoicings and devoicings

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-127
Author(s):  
Fang Li ◽  
David Kellogg
Keyword(s):  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Physical Activities ◽  
Thought Processes ◽  
Realist Novel ◽  
Direct Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Verbal Processes ◽  
North And South ◽  
Verbal Thinking

In this paper, we take up three novels: Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell (1848/2008), Shirley, published just afterwards by Charlotte Brontë, and North and South, published six years later by Gaskell. Each novel is a revoicing of previous works, and we shall present evidence that the last two directly and consciously revoice the first two. We argue that a form of revoicing we call “exaptation”, or the borrowing of formal devices for very different functions than those for which they initially evolved, can be observed on at least four different timescales: the genre, the author’s career, the novel’s characters and plot, and the exchanges of dialogue. With each book, we examine each timescale and then we look both quantitatively and qualitatively at the wordings of a request, a confession, and an act of violence. In this way, we hope to demonstrate how the early social realist novel developed devices for showing thought processes alongside the verbal processes and the physical activities of characters by devoicing speech, first as indirect discourse, then as quasi-direct discourse, and finally as unspoken understandings. It is, we argue, a way that is not very different from the way that the Russian psychologist Vygotsky hypothesized that children develop verbal thinking and inner speech from dialogue.

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