Wives and Daughters (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840224169 ISBN 13: 9781840224160

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1999

Synopsis

With an Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster

Gaskell's last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England.  At its core are family relationships father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements that ensue.

Despite its underlying seriousness, the prevailing tone is one of comedy.  Gaskell vividly portrays the world of the late 1820s and the forces of change within it, and her vision is always humane and progressive.

The story is full of acute observation and sympathetic character-study:  the feudal squire clinging to old values, his naturalist son welcoming the new world of science, the local doctor and his scheming second wife, the two girls brought together by their parent's marriage...

About this title

Review:

Wives and Daughters is set in the mid-19th century in the small village of Hollingford, in rural England. The Industrial Revolution hasn't yet thrown the country into turmoil, and the railway is just beginning to cut a swathe through the land. It sounds old-fashioned, (and there are themes in the novel which date it) but Gaskell's witty, warm tale of love and longing is surprisingly contemporary. Much of the fun in Wives And Daughters comes from Gaskell's sprightly characterisation, and willful insistence on the unconventional hero and heroine, both worthy, principled, and a little tedious. Molly Gibson, the doctor's daughter, is intelligent, spiritedly dutiful and given to much silent endurance. The object of her affections is Squire Hamley's younger son "Good Roger! Kind Roger! Dear Roger!", a sort of duller Darwin. The course of true love doesn't run smooth, thanks in the main, to the scintillating Cynthia, Molly's step sister. Cynthia is a glorious creation, willful, sinful and incredibly attractive, who, with her French education, strolls through the novel with "the free stately step of some wild animal of the forest"--moving almost, as it were, to the continual sound of music. Cynthia's mother, the epitome of snobbery and self-deceit, whose "words were ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts" adds to the piquant entertainment. The novel revolves around the trails and tribulations, the questionable reputations of the inhabitants of Hollingford. It was Gaskell's last and most mature work, powerful and engrossing in structure and unfinished. As her daughter reported, in January 1866, Elizabeth Gaskell died: "quite suddenly, without a moments warning, in the midst of a sentence" leaving the last chapter incomplete. Wives and Daughters is just a few pages short of an all embracing happy ending.--Eithne Farry

Review:

A superb edition - Easson's notes are well done - genuinely helpful - and the supporting scholarly materials (introduction, textual variants, bibliography) are also valuable. (Dr. C. J. Walsh, St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill)

A useful introduction and notes. Will use it on a course concerned with the relationships between thought and history through an analysis of rural society (W. J. Gregory, Newcastle Polytechnic.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1840224169
• ISBN 13: 9781840224160
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624