Wives and Daughters

This is Elizabeth Gaskell’s last novel and was not quite finished.  However it was so close to completion that it only would have required possibly one short chapter to finish it.

It is my favourite of her novels.  While I admire her work about social conditions in Manchester -and think highly of her for wanting to use her writing to help the poor, I can’t help feeling that she  was better at novels about country town life and “ordinary people”, especially set in the recent past. Wives and Daughters draws on her memories of her country girlhood.  It also draws on her past family life, with a stepmother.    Molly Gibson is the daughter of a country doctor, who is in the middle ranks of society.  He’s above the poor and the farming classes, but lower than the gentry or aristocracy who own land in the Hollingford area. But his work means that they are connected to all classes.  Dr Gibson is a widower who remarries, because he believes that his daughter, now a teenager, needs a mother’s care to bring her into society and look after her.  But the marriage is a mistake.  He chooses Hyacinth Kirkpatrick – a former governess and now a widowed lady of middling rank, like himself. She has a pretty daughter of Molly’s age but she herself is foolish and selfish, a Mrs Benet type. Like Mr Bennet, Dr Gibson soon finds her folly and selfishness aggravating, and her daughter has been brought up in a haphazard manner.  Cynthia is beautiful charming and accomplished and sweet tempered but she has a limited moral sense.  She is flirtatious because she has a desperate need for love, since her mother has never been very affectionate to her.  And like her mother, she hopes for security from a good marriage. Cynthia manages to entangle herself with several suitors, during the course of the novel.

The novel is very long, and covers many areas, such as the rise of the middle classes, the increased respect and status of for the medical profession, which is becoming more scientific.  There is also exploration of the differences between the landed gentry, as represented by Squire Hamley and the wealthier titled part of the aristocracy, represented by Lord and Lady Cumnor and their family, including the lively Lady Harriet. The plot covers the love affairs of Cynthia and Molly and their interaction, and Molly’s attempts to rescue Cynthia from a selfish stalking admirer, Preston, which result in social ostracism for her, for a time.