  ...for
keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed
to speck then; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully
at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing out at the
geese that occasionally venture into the gardens if the gates
are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics
without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments;
for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody's affairs
in the parish; for keeping their neat maidservants in admirable
order;for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor,and real
tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress,
the ladies of Cranford are quits sufficient. 'A man', as one of
them observed to me once, 'is so in the way in the house'.
|
Elizabeth Gaskell
It
is unnecessary to elaborate upon the characters of 'Cranford', on
poor flustered Miss Matty and her formidable sister Miss Deborah,
or the fiery Miss Pole, the flaccid Hon Jamieson and poor Miss Betsy
Barker, who put her Alderney cow into a flannel waistcoat and drawers.
But it is worth pointing out that even 'Cranford' has its hint of
rebellion; that even 'Cranford' makes a gentle attack on barriers
of class and convention. Miss Matty's realisation of the harshness
of the 'no followers' rule for servants, Lady Glenmire's shocking
decision to marry the local doctor; these were proclamations of humanity
and common sense, signs of the 'wind of change' of which Elizabeth
Gaskell was acutely conscious. 
After 'Cranford' was a further novel, 'Ruth', which got Mrs Gaskell
into even greater trouble than 'Mary Barton' had done. The book was
about sexual morality - an unmentionable subject at the time - and
it drew attention to the different standards expected from men and
from women. This was a fact of Victorian life which other writers
kept sternly suppressed. Worst of all, the heroine, Ruth, was a woman
who sinned but who did not suffer the usual fate of fallen women -
early death or shipment to the Colonies. Instead, Ruth was allowed
to work out her own redemption. The idea of an impure heroine was
unutterably shocking. Fathers burned the book lest it should fall
into the hands of their innocent daughters. Mrs Gaskell was shunned
by some of her own friends and acquaintances. As she wrote in a letter
of the time: 