Elizabeth Gaskell Part I

Elizabeth Gaskell’s works have enjoyed something of a revival in recent years, with the TV version of her best work “Wives and Daughters” and also a TV version of “Cranford” has been very popular.

She was born as Elizabeth Stevenson, in Chelsea; London in 1810; her father was a Unitarian minister.  The Unitarians were dissenters, outside the Church of England, and in many ways more liberal in their social, political and religious thinking.  They were usually based in towns, and tended to attract either liberal thinkers or people of the lower middle or working class. In later life, Gaskell became friends with Charlotte Bronte, whose husband, Arthur Nicholls was very bigoted against people who disagreed with the Anglican Church…

She herself was tolerant of other beliefs, but she was still very much of a Victorian, religious and strict in her conduct.

Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father sent her to Knutsford in Cheshire to be looked after by her aunt.  This country town was a place she loved and which became the basis for Cranford, and also for the country town in Wives and Daughters.  Her father had resigned his orders in the Unitarian church, on conscientious grounds... something that would happen with Mr Hale in North and South. He tried to find other work, and acquired a civil service post.  However he was far from well off, though his wife, Elizabeth’s mother had connections with well-known prominent Unitarian families such as the Martineaus, and Darwins.

Later her father remarried and had another family and Elizabeth continued living with her aunt.  It seems as if she did not get on too well with her stepmother, and this may have been the inspiration for Molly Gibson’s unhappy situation with her stepmother – the shallow silly Hyacinth.

She has a good education in a small school near her country home and at another school in Stratford upon Avon. Her marital prospects weren’t good, due to her lack of fortune but she did have a social life, sponsored by her relatives.

However she was a pretty, charming girl, intelligent and compassionate, and in 1832, she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian Minister and moved to Manchester.  Manchester was then a city which had grown up from the Industrial Revolution.  It contained factories, and slums and the working and living conditions of the poor were terrible. 

As a minister’s wife, Gaskell was exposed to the terrible urban poverty, and learned about industrial issues.  She began to write after the death of 2 of her children, a stillborn daughter and a baby son. Her marriage was a happy one.  William, by the standards of the time, was a liberal tolerant husband who allowed her a good deal of freedom.  He was dedicated to his work as a minster, which included a good deal of “social work.  This took up a lot of his time and he expected his wife to support him in it... but he encouraged her to write and to get her work published.