Wives And Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

A reread on an Elizabeth Gaskell classic for July 2025...

“To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl;” 
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives And Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell’s fifth and final novel, Wives And Daughters begins in the small English town of Hollingford in the early 1820/30s and focuses primarily on the bright and loving Molly Gibson. It was first released in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine from August 1964 to January 1866 and released as a book in 1866 by Smith, Elder And Company.

The Cornhill Magazine was a monthly literary journal which peaked in circulation under editor William Makepeace Thackery in the 1860s. It specialized in serializations of new and current novels and articles of interest on many differing subjects to interest the Victorian reader of the time and was a rival publication of Dickens’ All The Year Round. Works included in The Cornhill Magazine included such important novels as Washington Square by Henry James, Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and Wives And Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell.

“I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it was not me.” 
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives And Daughters

The town of Hollingford was richly representative of a common country community and was based upon the real life town of Knutsford in Cheshire where Elizabeth Gaskell spent her childhood. Knutsford was a place that had provided a wealth of stories and characters for Elizabeth Gaskell, including her much beloved Cransford stories - Mr. Harrison’s Confessions, Cranford, Round The Sofa and My Lady Ludlow.  

Gaskell’s Hollingford has a large caste of characters - its respected resident aristocracy in Earl & Countess Cumnor, its respected country doctor, its conservative spinsters and its small shops where news is exchanged and not-so-current fashion items are purchased. The rural life lives closely and comfortably with town life and everyone moves on with the secure sense that others have lived just so for many years before. In Hollingford we have a wonderfully deep and accurate sense of small town life during Victorian times - the old ways versus encroaching change and the class system and its changing sensibilities.

“How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.” 
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives And Daughters

There is also much to enjoy in Molly’s story - banter between herself and her country doctor father, her affectionate relationship as a motherless young woman with Mrs. Hamley, the squire’s wife and her eager anticipation of a relationship with a new step-sister. There are also the many moments in life for her that challenge her temper and her best feelings of kindness. This book may be set almost 200 years in the past - but people ring true and current. The language may be more formal. Social mores may be more strict. But there are the same fears and hopes that are familiar to us all. And the pitfalls that beset them are not all that different.

“But fate is a cunning hussy, and builds up her plans as imperceptibly as a bird builds her nest; and with the same kind of unconsidered trifles.” 
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives And Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell does what she does best in Wives And Daughters. We have a fertile storyline that touches on the joy of the common person and presents both the kindnesses and oblivious selfishness of the upper class aristocracy and the inter-house competitiveness that they held for each other.

“All sorts of thoughts cross one's mind—it depends upon whether one gives them harbour and encouragement” 
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives And Daughters

While writing Wives And Daughters, Gaskell passed away suddenly in 1865 after suffering a heart attack land so she left her last novel as an incomplete work. Gaskell’s editor, Frederick Greenwood - knowing what Gaskell was planning to write - completed the novel. 

There is much to discuss in the lengthy but enjoyable Wives And Daughters. Start reading now! We will meet to discuss this last work of Elizabeth Gaskell on Saturday, July 12th, 2025 over an early Summer Book Lunch. 

“Pooh! away with love! Nay, my dear, we loved each other so dearly we should never have been happy with any one else; but that's a different thing. People aren't like what they were when we were young. All the love nowadays is just silly fancy, and sentimental romance, as far as I can see.” 
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives And Daughters

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

She was a fine and handsome girl—not handsomer than some others, possibly—but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment.
Narrator - Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Author Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840 in a small hamlet called Higher Bockhampton, which is located in the southwestern English county of Dorset. His childhood was filled with a wealth of the deep influences of culture and locale. 

From their two-story brick and thatch cottage, Thomas Hardy naturally absorbed a love for literature from his mother, who although she had only served as a maidservant and cook, loved to read Latin poets and translated French romances.  Hardy had a deep love of poetry and even as a renowned author of novels, primarily thought of himself as a poet.

Thomas Hardy’s childhood very much revolved around literature, music, the local church and life in a rustic rural setting – all of which translated into the body of work that the author became renowned for and for which he was much loved by his devoted readers. His father, a self-employed master mason and building contractor, had descended from an old Dorset family tracing back to the Isle of Jersey in the1400s and was an avid violin player who passed along his love of music to young Hardy.

The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the highest, had at length mastered Tess.
Narrator - Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Years ago when I was finally able to put aside the college textbooks and night times taken up with study and homework, I set out on a personal journey to read through the classics… All the ones I felt that I had missed while locked into a “school system plan” that unfortunately was a fairly Austen-free zone. Now that my reading choices were my own I delved into the Brontë sisters, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, of course – Jane Austen and… Thomas Hardy.

I didn’t lose my heart to Hardy the way I did to John Keats but the writing style of Thomas Hardy totally captured my mind. His word-crafting is sublime and the wise reader will keep a dictionary handy if your love of words is equal to your love of story.

I long to visit England…  to one day have the chance to travel through Wessex…  to wander the sweet smelling farm where Bathsheba Everdene walked with Gabriel Oak among the pastures and flocks, where Tess Durbeyfield lived her early simple cottage life and the town of Casterbridge, where a mayor’s past catches up with him….

The problem is… there is actually no such place.

A fictitious area that featured as a setting in all of Hardy’s major novels, Wessex was named after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that historically did exist in southwest England prior to the Norman Conquest and it was the area that Hardy himself called home. Using this imagined world gave Hardy a feeling of freedom that enabled him to  translate his social concerns into his fictional works whether it related to class inequality issues, the ruination of many rural communities by new industry and technologies or the troubling gender issues that affected all levels of Hardy’s world.

As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse and provide for them. Her mother’s intelligence was that of a happy child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not the eldest, to her own long family of waiters on Providence.
Narrator - Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy wrote six novels that were an achievement of great British literature - Far From The Madding Crowd (1874), The Return Of The Native (1878), The Mayor Of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess Of The d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude The Obscure (1895).

These Wessex novels are outstanding works that continue to give us a wealth of unforgettable characters -  one of which is most definitely Tess Durbeyfield.  

“Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d’Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey Roll?”
Parson Tringham - Tess of the d’Urbervilles

The next read for The Jane Austen Tea Society in our current reading plan is Tess of the d’Urbervilles - the twelfth published novel by Hardy. It was originally released in the illustrated British newspaper The Graphic July through December of 1891 but in a censored version. A three volume edition then released later that year with the subtitle A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented. It was a controversial novel for late Victorian Britain with a lower rural class focus and interwoven treatments of religion and sexuality. But its vivid depiction of a woman’s struggle within the limits of society and her little sphere are deep and emotionally memorable.

Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience.
Narrator - Tess of the d’Urbervilles

There is much to discuss in our current read, Tess of the d’Urbervilles  — it’s a good one!  We will meet to discuss this much-loved work on January 25, 2025  over an early Spring Book Lunch.