Cranford

I prefer the series, but the book is good

Reading "Cranford" is a lot like spending an afternoon in the doily museum of a provincial city; you can't help but admire the skill of the embroidery but you have to wonder at your own sanity for being there. I stuffed the book in my carry-on, as a relief from the 20th C anguish in the novels I'd been reading recently, and found myself waiting out a snow delay with nothing to read but this staid portrayal of a circle of spinsters nourished chiefly by their own proprieties. Cranford is not a novel at all, but rather a series of nostalgic sketches of the old-fashioned manners and quaint habits of genteel but impoverished provincial ladies, gently satirical, a porcelain cup counterpart to Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers". Dickens is explicitly mentioned in several chapters of Cranford; Miss Dorothy Jenkyns, the most literary of the Cranford ladies, finds him vulgar and less eloquent in every way than Dr. Johnson. Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens were quite well acquainted with each other's work; in fact "Cranford" was first published in serial form in one of Dickens's magazines. There are many parallels, particularly between Dickens's "Hard Times" and Gaskell's "North and South". Both books focus on the dire conditions of labor in 19th C England; both can be considered liberal protest novels. I suppose Gaskell is never as knee-slapping funny as Dickens can be, but she has other virtues, closer to Trollope, in terms of cogent story-telling and sympathetic insight into characters of all classes and both genders. Gaskell was totally 'out of fashion' when I went to college. The luminaries of Victorian literature, as taught at Harvard in the 1960s, were Eliot, Austen, and the Brontes, with Dickens and Thackeray cast as their knaves and Trollope as their butler. But Gaskell has made a comeback. Aside from "North and South", her novels "Ruth", "Sylvia's Lovers", "Wives and Daughters," and others are in print and well worth reading. As her titles suggest, her feminism was more overt than that of her peers, and her sympathies were clearly 'liberal' in the current American political sense. Above all, she could tell a good story. Cranford was immensely popular in its time, when perhaps most readers had their own maiden aunts to caricature. It's quite well done in its way, but if you've never read Gaskell before, I wouldn't suggest starting with it. You might find it challenging to sit quietly with the ladies as they crochet and dither over their bonnets.

Let me begin this review by saying that if you are thinking about reading this book only because of the BBC series, you will find it very disappointing. The makers of that series used the authors name, the title of the book and some of the characters but the remainder of their production is pure invention. I am enjoying watching the BBC program, but it is not this book. Ms Charlotte Mitchell provides an Introduction and Notes for this book. It is my belief that it is essesntial to read the Introduction in order to fully understand Cranford. Elizabeth Gaskell had written a series of stories which appeared at irregular intervals in a magazine edited by Charles Dickens titled Household Words. The stories first appeared together as a novel in 1853. Ms Mitchell uses the Introduction to explain the chronology for the publishing of this and other novels by Elizabeth Gaskell. She also takes this opportunity to explore the question of whether or not Cranford was ever meant to be taken seriously by readers of Ms Gaskell since her other novels are so very different in tone from this one. One of the things I really appreciate which Ms Mitchell did was to include the Notes section to explain words and phrases which appear in the book which were very well understood in the 1800's but which may be unfamiliar to readers today. I read a lot of historical romantic fiction and these Notes gave me concrete explanations for words and phrases I have been too lazy to research for myself. I thought I knew what they meant before, now I know for sure. Items such as: 1. gigot - a sleeve style described as leg-of-mutton 2. baby-house - a dolls house 3. sarsenet - a soft thin silk material 4. blind man's holiday - a proverbial term for night or twilight Ms Mitchell states in the Introduction that Gaskell later came to regret the fact that she had caused Colonel Brown to be killed in the first story. If he had remained a character longer in the series, I think that Cranford might have gone in a very different direction. As it is, Cranford is the story of a certain class of women, either unmarried or widowed, who live in a small English villiage. The main character is Miss Matty Jenkyns who only comes into prominence after the death of her older sister, Miss Deborah. The women relish their lack of male inhabitants and see themselves as lucky in not having to deal with the ways of men, which they see as uncouth and almost barbaric (they will speak too loud!). There is a very strict social structure among these women, even as to what time of day they can visit each other and what kind of clothes they should be wearing when the visits take place. These rules are in place to keep everyone on an even keel, so that everyone understands the rules, and no one may change the rules without the approval of the most prestigious ranking member of their set. Cranford is a study in contrasts. The differences in the male approach to the world, with their freedoms,

A very quick review. A beautifully written book filled with the feminine niceties and social customs of provincial early 19th Century life. A very interesting read to myself as I was born at Cranford Lodge, Knutsford, the true market town in the north of England that Gaskell based her novel on. A visit to Knutsford itself brings out the flavour of the writing and tours of "Cranford" including Miss Matty's house and the Assembly Rooms at the George can be arranged through the Gaskell Society!

To you scoffers who find this novel uneventful - I say read it again toward the close of your life. The stories of these genteel ladies with their 40 year old lost loves and their strong familial relationships are very moving. I also like the way the book is contructed in a series of vignettes. But most of all I am enchanted with the "feel" of the portrait of village life in the middle of the 19th century - such a contrast with the mores of today it's hard to believe we are the same species! If you like Mrs. Gaskell, be sure to read Barbara Pym for the 20th century version.