Gaskell has long been overshadowed by other Victorian novelists, but with a new BBC production of Cranford currently on screen, now is the time to revisit her novels.
Childhood Tragedy
Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson in 1810, to a family living on the outskirts of London. She was one of eight children, although only herself and one of her brothers survived, an unusually high mortality rate even in the nineteenth century. Further tragedy struck when her mother died in 1812 – Elizabeth was just two years old.
Her father went on to remarry, and as a result Elizabeth spent a great deal of her childhood staying with her aunt in the Cheshire town of Knutsford, south of Manchester, which later provided the inspiration for the fictional location of Cranford.
Gaskell and Manchester
These childhood visits marked the start of her long association with the North of England, and Manchester in particular: in 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was the minister at Manchester’s Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. They chose to settle in the city, which was undergoing a huge period of industrial revolution during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with its huge mills and factories leading the way in textile manufacturing.
These surroundings help explain Gaskell’s preoccupation with the lives of the working classes, a concern not always shared by her rural contemporaries. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848, and depicts the lives of two ordinary, working-class Manchester families. Their poverty and harsh living and working conditions are shown in a surprisingly direct manner, with one chapter entitled “Death and Poverty”.
Gaskell's other Novels
Class issues were clearly a concern for Gaskell in this debut novel, which showed distaste for the huge gap between the rich and the poor. Her next novel, Cranford (1851 – 1853) was at first something of a departure from this, in its depiction of the everyday lives of the residents of this small Cheshire town. This novel had come about because Charles Dickens had so admired Mary Barton that he asked Gaskell to produce a new work that he could serialise. Although Cranford starts off as a gentle country tale with many comic inerludes, Gaskell's interest in industrial progress soon comes through when proposals to extend the railway line through Cranford threaten to disrupt traditional village life.
Five other novels followed: the little known Ruth in 1853, North and South in 1854 – 1855, Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), Cousin Phyllis (1864), and Wives and Daughters in 1865.
Life of Charlotte Bronte
Gaskell also wrote a number of short stories, as well as the most famous biography of her friend Charlotte Bronte, published in 1857. Despite her literary success, Gaskell remained firmly rooted in Manchester, living at Plymouth Grove from 1850 until she died in 1865. The house can still be seen to this day, although it has been allowed to fall into disrepair. A programme of renovation is underway, however, with the aim of reopening to the public and providing a fitting tribute to this under-rated novelist.
