Notes to Chapter 1
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Notes Notes to Chapter 1 1. Lord David Cecil's discussion of Gaskell in Early Victorian Novelists (London: Constable, 1934) is a notorious example of devaluing a writer by reference to her femininity: 'she was all a woman was expected to be; gentle, domestic, tactful, unintelledual, prone to tears, easily shocked. So far from chafing at the limits imposed on her activities, she accepted them with serene satisfaction' (p. 198). The first writer to give extended treatment to Gaskell's involvement in feminism is Aina Rubenius in The Woman Question in Mrs Gaskell's Life and Work (Uppsala: Lundequistka Bokhandeln, 1950). 2. Raymond Williams finds that despite her 'deep imaginative sympathy' for the workers, Gaskell in Mary Barton shares and expresses middle-class fears about working-class action. Culture and Society (London: Chatto, 1958) p. 90. John Lucas writes that the reconciliation between classes in North and South comes down to teaching the lower orders to know their place. 'Mrs Gaskell and Brotherhood', in Tradition and Tolerance in Nineteenth-century Fiction, ed. David Howard et al. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966) p.205. 3. See especially Patsy Stoneman, Elizabeth Gaskell (Brighton: Harvestelj 1987), and Margaret Homans, Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-century Women~ Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 4. Winifred Gerin, Eliubeth Gaskell: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976) p. 17. 5. Annette B. Hopkins, Elizabeth GaskeU: Her life and Work (London: John Lehmann, 1932) p. 34. 6. See Sally Stonehouse, 'A Letter from Mrs Gaskell', Brontl Society Transactions, vol. 20 (1991) pp. 217-22; and J. A. V. Chapple, 'Two Unpublished Gaskell Letters from Burrow Hall, Lancashire', The Gaskell Society Journal, vol. 6 (1992) pp. 67-72. 7. W. R. Greg, Edinburgh Rernew (April 1849) pp. 402-35. 8. Elizabeth Gaskell, My Lady Ludlow and Other Stories (Oxford: World's Oassics, 1989) p. 131. 141 142 EUZABETH GASKELL 9. John Ruskin, 'Of Queens' Gardens', in Sesame and Lilies (1865; rpt. London: George Allen, 1901) p. 108. 10. Ibid., p. 186. 11. Fran~ise Basch, Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel (London, 1974) pp. 7, 269. 12. Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) pp. 28-58. 13. [J. Ludlow], North British Review, vol. 19 (May 1853) pp. 167-9. 14. Ibid., p. 169. 15. Ibid., p. 155. 16. Ibid., pp. 162, 163. 17. Homans, Bearing the Word, p. 11. 18. Ibid., p. 13. 19. Ibid., p. 38. 20. Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction, p. 26. 21. Ibid., p. 163. 22. Homans, Bearing the Word, p. 226. 23. Woolf writes: 'if one is a woman one is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical' - A Room of One~ Own (St Albans: Panther, 1977) p. 93. Notes to Chapter 2 1. For example, Manchester's Unitarian MPs and manufacturers opposed factory legislation intended to limit employers' powers. See Valentine Cunningham, Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) pp. 132-3. 2. See Monica Fryckstedt, EliZIIbeth GaskeU's Mary Barton and Ruth: A Challenge to Christian England (Uppsala: Almquist and Wlksell, 1982) pp. 88-94. 3. W. Greg, Edinburgh Review, vol. 89 (1849) pp. 402-35. This review is discussed in Cunningham, Everywhere Spoken Against, pp. 133-5. 4. M. Hompes, 'Mrs E. C. Gaskell', Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 55 (1895) p. 124. 5. See Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. 51 (1849) pp. 48-63, and British Quarterly Review, vol. 9 (1849) pp. 117-36. NOTES 143 6. Carlyle, 'Charti.sm', in Criticlll and Miscellaneous Essays (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899) vol. IV, p. 169. 7. See John Lucas, 'Mrs Gaskell and Brotherhood', in Thulition and lblerance in Nineteenth-century Fiction, ed. David Howard et al. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) p. 167. 8. Carlyle, 'Com-Law Rhymes' (1839); in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. III, p. 138. 9. Ibid., 148. 10. The theme of women's public speaking is treated by Rosemarie Bodenheimer in 'Private Grief and Public Acts in Mary Barton', Diclcens Studies Annual, vol. 9 (1981) 195-216. 11. Elizabeth Haldane, Mrs Gaskell and Her Friends (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931) pp. 47-8. 12. John Rylands Ubrary, English Mss 730, 14. 13. Craig Owens, 'The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism', in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London and Sydney: Pluto Press, 1985) pp. 68-9. 14. This point is made by W. A. Craik. who argues that in Mary Barton Gaskell needs 'the social aim' less for its own sake than in order 'to justify writing at all'. See Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Pruoincial Novel (London: Methuen, 1975) p. 4. Notes to Chapter 3 1. Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 2 (1853) p. 126. 2. See Spectator, Saturday, 15 January 1853, pp. 61-2. 3. Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 2 (1853) p. 126. 4. Letter to Gaskell, 26 April 1852. The Brontls, Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence, ed. T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (Oxford: Blackwell, 1933) vol. III, p. 332. 5. Letter to Blanche Smith, 19 April 1853, in The Correspondence of Arthur Hugh Clough, ed. Frederick Mulhauser (Oxford: Oarendon Press, 1957) vol. 1L p. 418. 6. Brian Crick. 'Mrs Gaskell's Ruth: A Reconsideration', Mosaic, vol. 9 (1977) no. 2, pp. 85-104. 7. Alan Shelston, 'Ruth: Mrs Gaskell's Neglected Novel', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 58 (1975-6) pp. 182. 8. See Patsy Stoneman, Elizabeth Gaskell (Brighton: Harvester, 1987) p.106. 144 EUZABE1H GASKELL 9. Letter to Gaskell, 12 January 1853. In The Bronth, vol. IV, p. 34. 10. [J. M. Ludlow] North British Review, vol. 19 (1853) p. 169. 11. Elizabeth Rigby, 'Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre', Quarterly Review, vol. 84 (1848) p. 174; Matthew Arnold, letter to Mrs Forster; 14 April 1853, in Letters of Matthew Arnold 1848-1888, ed. George W. E. Russell (London: Macmillan, 1895) vol. I, p. 29. 12. The Bronth, vol. IV, pp. 14 and 34-6. 13. Martineau's review of Villette for Daily News, quoted in LCB, p. 619. 14. The Bronth, vol. IV, pp. 7&-7. 15. Ibid. vol. IV, p. 34. 16. Miriam J. Benn, 'Some Unpublished Gaskell Letters', Notes and Queries, vol. 225 (1980) p. 508. 17. Alan Shelston, notes to LCB, p. 592. 18. Wmifred Gerin, Charlotte Bronte: The Evolution of Genius (Oxford: Oarendon, 1967) p. 573. Notes to Chapter 4 1. Patsy Stoneman, Elizabeth Gaskell (Brighton: Harvester, 1987) p. 93. 2. See Nina Auerbach, Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978). 3. Martin Dodsworth, 'Women Without Men at Cranford', ESSil1Js in Criticism, vol. 13 (1963) pp. 132-45. 4. For a discussion of North and South as a novel challenging the paternalism initially embodied by the Hale family, see Rosemarie Bodenheimer; The Politics of Story in Victorian Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) pp. 53-67. Bodenheimer sees Gaskell's novel as in part an answer to Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1849), arguing that 'If Bronte rests, finally, in the model of paternalism, Gaskell takes the parental metaphor apart to observe its absurdities and insists on the health of ideological change' (54). 5. This is argued in Deidre David, Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981) PP· 43-4. 6. P. N. Furbank, 'Mendacity in Mrs Gaskell', Encounter, vol. 40 (1973) p. 51. NOTES 145 7. See Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Nuoel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) pp. 42-8. Notes to Chapter 5 1. Gaskell used Admiralty records of these incidents. For a dis cussion of her sources see A. W. Ward (ed.), The Works of Mrs Gaskell, vol. 6: Sylvia's Lovers (London: John Murray, 1920) pp. xxii-xxvi. 2. John McVeagh, Elizabeth Gaskell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970) p. 45. 3. The letter is addressed to Marianne Gaskell, asking her to copy and send the critique to the novelist. Margaret Homans suggests that Marianne herself was the author of The Three Paths, but does not offer evidence for this view; see Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-century Women's Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) p. 171. 4. Thomas Macaulay, quoted in Rosemary Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985) p. 71. 5. See Patsy Stoneman, Elizabeth Gaskell (Brighton: Harvester, 1987) p. 154. 6. J. Rignall, 'The Historical Double: Waverley, Sylvia's Lovers, The Trumpet-Major', Essays in Criticism, vol. 34 (1984) p. 23. 7. Ibid., p. 24. 8. The epigraph to Sylvia's Lovers is taken from In Memoriam, section LVI. Lines 25-8 of this section are: '0 life as futile, then, as frail! 0 for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil. Gaskell's epigraph comprises the last three lines of this quatrain, omitting mention of the troubling idea of life's futility. Notes to Chapter 6 1. Edgar Wright, Mrs Gaskell: The Basis for Reassessment (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) p. 246. 2. Ibid., pp. 47, 196. 146 EUZABETII GASKELL 3. Patsy Stoneman, Elimbeth Gaskell (Brighton: Harvester, 1987) p. 201. 4. Angus Easson, Elimbeth GaskeU (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979) p. 220. 5. Quoted in A. B. Hopkins, Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Work (London: John Lehm~ 1952) p.