#Wives and daughters

[fictionadventurer]

I make fun of all the horrible parents in Austen, but they've got nothing on the fathers in Gaskell's works.

Austen fathers will do things like:

Sit in his library and make fun of you and your sisters instead of preparing for your futures

Be a health nut hypochondriac who prefers that he and everyone else stay safely at his home

Be a vain fop who wastes all his money

While Gaskell fathers do things like:

Murder a guy

Lose other people's money through speculation and then commit suicide

Doom himself to a lifetime of marriage with an unsuitable woman because boys were starting to be interested in you

Make you, a teenager, tell your mother that you're all going to move across the country on very little notice because he never bothered to mention the crisis of conscience he'd been wrestling with for years

Incite a mob to riot and burn down the home and business of a local family

Gaskell fathers are just living on an entirely different level of drama.

But the worst part is that the Gaskell fathers also tend to be much more loving than Austen's.

[fiction-quotes]

The autumn drifted away through all its seasons; the golden corn-harvest, the walks through the stubble fields, and rambles into hazel-copses in search of nuts; the stripping of the apple-orchards of their ruddy fruit, amid the joyous cries and shouts of watching children; and the gorgeous tulip-like colouring of the later time had now come on with the shortening days. There was comparative silence in the land, excepting for the distant shots, and the whirr of the partridges as they rose up from the field.

  —  Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Gaskell)

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[onlymollygibson]

Talk about the novel you're reading as if it's fanfiction

I'll go first:

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Length: 190k words

Completion Status: Abandoned, but dont let that stop you from reading this fic. Sadly, the author passed away before she could write the last chapter. She told her beta reader her plans for it and he wrote an ending, but everyone agrees it doesn't have the same flavor as the original. There was a fan film made a few years back and I love their ending, even if it is a bit OOC.

Main pairing: Molly Gibson/Roger Hamley (slow burn, friends to oh-crap-hes-in-love-with-my-sister to lovers)

(Note: the author claims she didn't write rpf, but Roger Hamley is suspiciously similar to Charles Darwin.)

Other pairings: Cynthia Kirkpatrick/Roger Hamley, Cynthia Kirkpatrick/Mr. Henderson, Cynthia Kirkpatrick/Robert Preston, Mr. Gibson/Hyacinth Kirkpatrick, Mr. Gibson/cheese, Hyacinth Kirkpatrick/Robert Preston (one-sided), Osborn Hamley/Aimee, Squire Hamley/Mrs. Hamley

Warnings: major character death, serious illnesses, mentions of 19th century medicine, underage (not the main pairing), mentions of grooming, see also: Robert Preston is his own warning (but the fic doesn't condone his actions), child neglect, financial abuse, 19th century purity culture

A few people have done podfics. My favorite version is read by Prunella Scales but it's behind a paywall (Audible). You can find free podfics on LibriVox.

There is also a fan film which I would highly recommend.

[whenthegoldrays]

shimmering beautiful, and when I break it’s in a million pieces | cynthia kirkpatrick ♪

[perioddramapolls]

Period dramas dresses tournament: Blue dresses Round 1- Group C: Ann Walker, Gentleman Jack (pics set) vs Cynthia Kirkpatrick, Wives and daughters (gifset)

Propaganda for Cynthia's dress (written by a submitter):

It's a gorgeous blue shot silk with gold trim, dagged edges, massive sleeves, and that hair. What else do you need?

[janeaustentextposts]

Thoughts on Cynthia Kirkpatrick of Wives & Daughters and Mary Crawford as friends or a couple?

Poor Femme, Rich Femme. I could get on board with that. Could be extremely wholesome Cinderella story or extremely unhealthy toxic financial domination/coercion, or anywhere in-between, depends how one plays it.

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

PERIOD DRAMA APPRECIATION WEEK 2024

Day 2: Favourite Character(s):

Yi Bang-won, My Country: The New Age

Violet Crawley, Downton Abbey

Thomas Barrow, Downton Abbey

Esther Summerson, Bleak House

Molly Gibson, Wives and Daughters

Margaret Hale and John Thornton, North and South

Ulanara Ruyi, Legend of Ruyi

John Harmon and Bella Wilfer, Our Mutual Friend

[bethanydelleman]

On Chapter 35 of w&d and I'm convinced it would lend itself perfectly to a kdrama adaptation due to the freaking reveal out of left field that Osborne has might have a terminal illness

(Don't how it'll end yet but knowing Mrs. Gaskell.........)

I won't spoil, but we know that Mrs. Gaskell is a bit um, trigger happy as a writer you might say...

Wives & Daughters is a masterpiece. I don't know if an adaptation could get it right (I haven't seen the one that exists) because the story is so subtle. The growth and character development is so drawn out. And could anyone be the perfect Mr. Gibson?

[fictionadventurer]

The complete set of Victorian flower language cover concepts for Elizabeth Gaskell's novels.

The flower choices are more based what I could find free lineart for than on the exact flower meanings, but this gets the concept across.

Mary Barton: Oak - strength (would have preferred black eyed susan - justice)

Cranford: Ivy - friendship

Ruth: Chamomile - patience in adversity

North and South: Hollyhock - ambition (was hoping to find a flower meaning "understanding" or any other more applicable term, but alas)

Sylvia's Lovers: Marigold - grief, jealousy

Wives and Daughters: Magnolia - love of nature (was trying for morning glory - affection)

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton, North and South, and Wives and Daughters

Over the past year I’ve read Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, North and South, and Wives and Daughters, and I wanted to try to pull together some of my thoughts about these books and how they relate to each other.

Elizabeth Gaskell was a rough contemporary of the Brontës (and a friend and biographer of Charlotte Brontë), but outlived them all. These three novels were published in 1848, 1855, and 1866 respectively; Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were published in 1847.

The three novels follow, in my opinion, a rough trajectory of decreasing radicalism, but (in some respects) increasing skill as a writer. Mary Barton is the most intensely socially conscious, and in my opinion Gaskell does a better job of writing a engaging novel on the behalf of the working class than Dickens often does - the writing is tighter and more engaging, and the working-class characters more nuanced and textured. (For context, all the Dickens I’ve read is A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations.) The book is scattered throughout with caveats - for example, that factory-owners feasting while workers starve may not be a fact, but that it is something workers can understandably feel to be true - that show how aware Gaskell was that it would be controversial. It was written before - but published during - the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, and Gaskell even goes so far as the reference the revolutions in her preface to the book:

“To myself the idea which I have formed of the state of feeling among too many of the factory-people in Manchester, and which I endeavoured to represent in this tale (completed above a year ago), has received some confirmation from the events which have so recently occurred among a similar class on the Continent.

OCTOBER, 1848

(Charlotte Brontë appears to have been affected by the revolutions of 1848 in a very different way; her novel Shirley, published in 1849, is fairly strongly anti-worker and pro-factory-owner, portraying anyone who protests against the treatment of workers as a drunk or a troublemaker.)

While it has its meldoramatic elements, Mary Barton is on the whole a sympathetic depiction of a Manchester working-class family and their friends. In the opening chapters, some of the arguments of conservatives are dealt with deftly rather than by direct assault. The depiction of the two central families in comparatively better times shows what ‘luxuries’ were to working-class people - some slices of ham, a bit of butter, a bit of sugar, a dinner-party between friends, a handful of pretty objects around the house - in a way that undermines conservative claims that poverty was due to overspending in good times rather than saving for bad. There’s a varied cast of characters - some more idealized or archetypal in typical Victorian style, but most of them three-dimensional, human, and engaging. (Some of them - including both developed ones and archetypal ones - made me wonder if Gaskell ever read Les Misérables, and if so what she thought of it.)

This makes some elements of North and South frustrating by comparison. While working-class women in Mary Barton (at least some of them) are living, breathing people, the sole working-class woman in North and South is a Victorian archetype, a chronically ill girl who speaks in Bible verses and dies to prompt the redemption arcs of other characters. It’s evident that Gaskell got blowback for Mary Barton and was pressured to provide a more ‘balanced’ perspective in North and South - it’s telling that being ‘balanced’ meant reducing the humanity and complexity of working-class characters.

I will be blunt: I do not like John Thornton. He talks too much like a Calgary oilman resenting big government for daring to impose basic environmental and working standards. He makes a template of conservative arguments that endure to this day - that he’s a self-made-man and any working-class person could do what he did, if they had the grit and gumption. He’d rather go bankrupt than allow his workers to unionize. And he does not undergo a ‘redemption arc’ or change of heart on this - rather, the worker who supports unionization undergoes a ‘redemption arc’ to realize that unions are bad! What John Thornton does learn is that 1) using inexperienced imported scab workers rather than experienced and knowledgeable workers gets you a crappy product and 2) he can talk to his workers and plan out some basic reforms to improve their lives a little.

That said, one major improvement in North and South is that the relationship between Margaret Hale and John Thornton is much better written than the relationship of the title character in Mary Barton. Mary’s involves her abruptly (and unconvincingly) realizing she’s in love with a man who has been pursuing her throughout the book and whom she has been doing her utmost to discourage, and has never shown any interest in. Margaret and John’s is developed over time and with more complexity, and in a way that is far more compelling and convincing - probably what makes North and South more popular than the others.

Wives and Daughters is another sort of book entirely - gentler and less melodramatic (and with fewer major character deaths - though there’s a notable death toll among side characters), set in the countryside and in the past, and more a social comedy/dramedy with a side of romance. The class commentary as regards the working class is almost gone - the main characters are a combi ation of middle-class people and lower-level gentry. It is, in a sense, more Austenian in its gentle satire of the foibles of its cast of characters, interspersed with some more dramatic moments; or more like some of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books that combine romance with poking gentle fun at the various characters of small-town life. But the characters are more nuanced and less archetypal, and the moral lessons mostly less pointed, than in the two previous books, and the main character’s challenges and struggles are of a more grounded nature. (There’s a side character, Cynthia, who particularly interests me and whom I might do a separate post on.) You can see the improvement in Gaskell’s writing; you can also see that she’s stepped away from politics. (The romance isn’t as good as North and South though.) The main theme that could be considered political is that good, solid, practical knowledge, hard work, courage, and honesty are preferable to any amount of upper-class ‘refinement’. The worst crime any major character commits is to be shallow and annoying.

Here’s one interesting case of a contrast between Wives and Daughters and Gaskell’s earlier work. In Mary Barton, Mary is pursued by - and actively interested in - a factory-owner’s son, a man outside of her own social class, and this is portrayed as a serious moral fault that precipitates some of the book’s major events. In Wives and Daughters, there is a much more socially unequal marriage between two side characters, and the lower-class woman is not treated as bad or faulty for it, but the plot gets into some of the complications of the match (the husband is afraid of disinheritance if he reveals the marriage to his father, and in that case would have no ability to support his wife abd child due to being gentry with no useful skills; the husband dies; there’s some personality and culture clash between the wife and his family in the aftermath, but ultimately it works out). In the more melodramatic Mary Barton, a woman accepting attentions from a mich higher-ranking man is a major issue of moral character; in the more grounded Wives and Daughters, it’s a matter of practical challenges entailed by the match.

(Gaskell died before finishing Wives and Daughters, but it’s close enough to finished that you can easily see the briad strokes of how everything’s going to wrap up.)

I’d recommend all the of the books; they’re all worth reading if you like 1800s literature. Though, being from the 1800s, they do all have some moments and sentiments that are jarring to the 21st-century reader.

[fiction-quotes]

“Nay, nay!” said the squire. “It's not so easy to break one's heart. Sometimes I've wished it were. But one has to go on living – all the appointed days, as it says in the Bible.”

  —  Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Gaskell)

[lady-vetinari]

JOMP BPC - September 7th - Circle of Books

[whenthegoldrays]

Much as I try to understand and accept Austen’s choice to have Fanny end up with Edmund in MP, I admit I’m struggling with his character after having read Wives and Daughters, because he pales so much in comparison to Roger Hamley. Roger is proof that you can see a girl non-romantically, be interested in someone else, and yet still treat your original friend with kindness and not forget about her. *glares at Edmund as he goes into the avenue without Fanny*

So like, I don’t dislike Edmund, I never have, but I simply can’t love him like I love Roger, because the flaws I’ve tried to rationalize and forgive become much more apparent in comparison.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME

Your eyes have been opened (you have read W&D) and there's no going back (you'll have to watch some people watch/read N&S and never touch another Gaskell ever again, missing on the absolute masterpiece that is Wives and Daughters).

[the-secret-historian]

there's a specific itch that can only be scratched by 19th-century literature