Cousin Phillis - Tragedy Averted

If you haven't read Gaskell's Cousin Phillis yet, be forewarned that this post contains spoilers. However, if you're like me, you might enjoy the book more knowing that none of the major characters dies. In fact, offhand, I can't think of a single death in the novella, which must make this unique among Gaskell's works!

Not that there isn't a life-threatening illness and plenty of opportunities for Gaskell to wrench hearts again, but this time she merely settled for merely putting the reader through the wringer waiting for the axe to fall.

I'm being flip, but I think that Cousin Phillis does mark a maturing style on Gaskell's part that culminates in Wives and Daughters. Speaking of Wives and Daughters, Ebenezer Holman, Phillis's father, foreshadows Dr. Gibson in his relationship with his daughter. They are close, they are alike in interests and temperament, and he panics when he realizes that his daughter is no longer a little girl but a marriageable woman.

I also enjoyed contrasting Cousin Phillis with Sylvia's Lovers. As I mentioned in the previous post on this work, she's telling the same basic story twice but exploring different ways in which the relationships and the character of the young woman can change and grow and evolve.
Unlike Sylvia's Lovers, I love the way this story closes. Betty, the family's kitchen servant, tells Paul, the narrator, about the speech she delivered to Phillis, who was taking too long to recover from the fever that set in after her heart was broken by the faithlessness of her erstwhile lover:

'Now, Phillis!' said she, coming up to the sofa; 'we ha' done a'we can for you, and th' doctors has done a' they can for you, and I think the Lord has done a' He can for you, and more than you deserve, too, if you don't do something for yourself. If I were you, I'd rise up and snuff the moon, sooner than break your father's and your mother's hearts wi' watching and waiting till it pleases you to fight your Own way back to cheerfulness. There, I never favoured long preachings, and I've said my say.'

We all should have a Betty in our lives to tell us to fight our own way back to cheerfulness and not to break the hearts of those who love us with our melancholy. It's worth saying that Phillis takes Betty's words to heart and takes charge of her own fight and rallies. You go, girl!

In a nutshell, here is what Gaskell is saying in Cousin Phillis: we can't control what others do--if a lover leaves before he even proposes, if he marries someone else instead of returning home to us--but we can control how we respond to it.

Cousin Phillis - Geeks and Freaks...the other side of Sylvia

I started Elizabeth Gaskell's Cousin Phillis (Victorian Collection) last night. Structurally and in length, it seems to be really more of a novella than a novel. It is divided into parts, four of them, instead of chapters, and it's only just under 100 pages in the Penquin edition I have, so this promises to be a quick, but interesting read.

It is quite different from what I was expecting. Phillis and her father are nerds, rural, Victorian style, but nerds none the less. They read Virgil for fun, they get up between 3 and 4 in the morning so that they can have plenty of time to work, they are fascinated by the narrator's father, who is a self-taught engineer/inventor and a kindred spirit to Phillis and father, who also happens to be an Independent minister in his spare time (i.e., on the weekends). She's a golden beauty to boot, and a model seventeen-year-old.

Actually, Phillis is the flip of Sylvia from Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers, the novel that precedes this chronologically. Sylvia, also a rural beauty and an only child, couldn't care less about learning and has a male cousin who worships her. Interestingly, Gaskell is taking roughly the same story in a much different direction. The male cousin, in this case he's the narrator, knows that Phillis is completely out of his league and is quite comfortable acknowledging that she is goddess material and he would really rather be friends with goddesses than married to them.

There are many things I'm enjoying in this work--another run at the Sylvia story, the information about the building of the railroad line (the narrator is a clerk for the chief engineer responsible for building a spur of the railroad in the neighborhood where Phillis and her family live), and the very positive portrayal of the geeks/nerds who thirst for knowledge, appreciate engineering and mechanics, and follow their passions.

I have spent most of my life reading Victorian/Edwardian/Regency novels so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my world view is aligned with the "Progress is Good" and "Technology will Make the World a Better Place" mantras that characterize 19th century thought. There's an irony, of course, in that I am also tremendously nostalgic for unsuburbanized landscapes and lifestyles and totally buy into the Romantic view of nature as nurturer.

I'm hopeful that the narrator's engineer boss, whom he idolizes, and Phillis will hit it off. They seem made for each other. An engineer God and a Latin-reading milkmaid Goddess. I really love Gaskell!

Reading Gaskell for the First Time?

Mary-Laure left a comment on the previous blog entry asking for a recommendation on which Gaskell to read first.

Here are my thoughts on the subject. Caveat - I haven't yet read Cousin Phillis, nor have I read ALL the short stories, but I think I've read enough to venture an opinion.

1) North and South - some people have a problem liking Margaret, but I think she is a marvelous Victorian heroine. Not as "on a pedestal" as many of Dickens' heroines, but definitely of the angel variety who stumbles from time to time. N&S is a love story, it's a social problem story, and it has a good cross section of characters, showing Gaskell's range and sympathies.

2) Cranford - her most popular novel, and her personal favorite. Based on reminiscences of her girlhood in Knutsford, it is episodic in nature, gentle in tone and humor, and sweet. Dickens loved Gaskell's Cranford stories, which he published as individual pieces before she collected them into a novel.

3) Wives and Daughters - I think of this as Gaskell's masterpiece, but, tragically, she died just before completing it. It is rich in characters that defy type, rich in detail, rural, and a thumping good read. It lacks the social problem aspect that characterized most of Gaskell's writing, especially her early writing, and drove her to sacrifice so much of her time to writing so I can't say that it is the one Gaskell to read, but it is marvelous.

4) The Grey Woman - a novella that is a wonderful Blackbead type story. If all you know about Gaskell is Cranford, the GW is something completely different.

5) My Lady Ludlow - a fascinating novella that shows Gaskell's ability to weave various stories and themes into a cohesive whole, with variations in narrative technique.

6) Sylvia's Lovers - while I never warmed to the heroine, this is a purely historical novel with all the dialogue delivered in accurate dialect. A monumental feat of historical research, inspired during Gaskell's visit to Whitby with her daughters. Based on true events.

7) The Old Nurse's Story - my favorite of Gaskell's short stories. A classic Victorian ghost story.

8) Ruth - a fascinating moral tale in which Gaskell takes the road not often taken by Victorian authors and champions the unwed mother.

Sylvia's Lovers - Dialect and Extras

I've finished Sylvia's Lovers and have been digesting a bit before posting my thoughts on it. To aid in the digestion, I read the sections in Jenny Uglow's Gaskell bio that deal with SL and the writing of it. The main thing I learned was what a tremendous job Gaskell did with the dialects of the various characters. This was pretty much lost on my American tin ear, but apparently she distinguished between classes and regions to a degree that would have made Henry Higgins proud.

Here's what Uglow says:

...Gaskell kept faith with the expression of the people. Speech, as William [Gaskell's husband] had insisted in his 'Lectures on Lancashire Dialect', has its own history and evolution, displaying regional, class and individual variants. Gaskell carefully gave Bell Robson Cumbrian forms to fit her origins. The manuscript reveals numerous alterations of word endings and technical details such as variations of the definite--the, th', t'...Such details, imperceptible to most of her readers, were in tune with her determination to gather the 'unimportant' chaff and dust of past lives.

I still have to read about press gangs, which is an appendix in the Penquin Classics version I have of the novel, but I think I can say that I liked the book well enough. I've heard that many critics think that Gaskell fell into melodrama in the final volume, and much as I like Gaskell, I can't say I disagree with this. The chapter in which Philip saves Kinraid stretches belief to the breaking point, and their last encounter pushes it over the edge. In reading the bio of Gaskell simultaneously with reading the works themselves shows that Gaskell was an impatient writer. In SL, unlike N&S, she wasn't writing serially, but life had intruded on her progress with the novel to such a degree that she was impatient to be done with it and so forced the ending in ways that require revision...but unless there were lawsuits, as in the case of her bio of Bronte, it seems that Gaskell rarely reworked what she produced.

In comparing Gaskell to Austen, Austen's novels, except Persuasion and perhaps Northanger Abbey, are polished, perfected, exquisite, whereas Gaskell's tend to be hurried. It's significant to me that Gaskell said that Cranford was the only of her novels that she ever reread once she had finished it.

Men and Their Houses

TeresaAF from Elegant Extracts made an interesting comment on my post about the similarities between P&P and N&S with regards to the heroine softening towards the hero when she sees him in his native habitat--she related this to the scene in Miss Austen Regrets "where Dr. Haden remarks that Elizabeth Bennet only realizes she loves Mr. Darcy after she has seen how big his house is."

Fresh from that comment, I was proof listening to portion 2 of Gaskell's The Grey Woman, which I am recording for LibriVox, and I was struck by another aspect of this man/house characterization. In The Grey Woman, the heroine, Anna, becomes a prisoner in her husband's castle just as she becomes a prisoner in her marriage. She is isolated from her family, forbidden to enter parts of the castle, and spied upon by the servants. In fact, she says at one point that "I have sometimes fancied since that the flower-garden, to which the only access from the castle was through his rooms, was designed in order to give me exercise and employment under his own eye."

Likewise in Sylvia's Lovers, Gaskell describes Sylvia as feeling as if she is a prisoner in her husband's house. She, of course, is imprisoned by her marriage, which not only prevents her from marrying Kinraid when he returns for her but from living the rural life she has loved.

In all four works, the heroine first sees the main man (I can hardly call Monsieur de la Tourelle or Philip Hepburn "heroes") for what he truly is when he is in his own home, and that home reflects his character.

In P&P and N&S, the heroine softens toward the stern hero when she sees him at home. In The Grey Woman and Sylvia's Lovers, the heroine first starts hardening towards her husband after she sees his house, and how it represents him and their marriage.

In The Grey Woman, Anna is fearful of the castle from the outset and increasingly her eyes are opened to the fact that M. de la Tourelle is a hard, cruel, murderous man and not the effete charmer who wooed her; her husband's castle is made of rock; it's massive, mysterious, and threatening. Even the flower garden has an ulterior purpose.

In Sylvia's Lovers, Sylvia comes to understand that Philip is selfish, deceitful, and weak after Kinraid returns, but from her wedding day, long before Kinraid returned, she hated the confines and stale air of Philip's town house and longed for the fresh air, solitude, and freedom of the farm she left behind.

Sylvia's Lovers - Entrapment and Heroines

I just read the part where Philip joins the marines, and the theme of entrapment really popped at this point. Of course, Charley Kinraid was pressed--that one is obvious. Sylvia was trapped into marrying Philip (i.e., he didn't tell her that Charley was pressed and he made himself indispensable to Sylvia and Bell Robson) and she definitely saw Philip's house in town as a prison. Philip knowingly allowed himself to be pledged to join the marines after Charley returned to Monkshaven and Sylvia discovered Philip's lie.



Here's a picture of modern Whitby, the town Gaskell used as a model for Monkshaven.

Charley was entrapped but rose within the ranks of the navy, perhaps finding a new identity in the chains he was forced to wear. Sylvia became a ghost within the confines of her entrapment. I wonder what Philip will do with the chains he willingly put on.

I wish Gaskell told more of Hester Rose's story. I find her a far more appealing heroine than Sylvia. I suppose I just can't forgive Sylvia for not wanting to learn to read and write.

Sylvia's Lovers - Be Careful What You Wish For

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote some wonderfully creepy stories--The Old Nurse's Story, The Grey Woman, Lois the Witch, among others--and Sylvia's Lovers puts them in mind tonight when I read about Philip and Sylvia's marriage. In so many of her stories, Gaskell plays with the theme of children being punished for the sins of their fathers. While that element is present only marginally with Daniel Robson's influence over Sylvia, the much stronger theme relates back to the post I wrote about the narrator's comments on prayer.

Philip lusted after Sylvia to the point where he failed himself morally (i.e., in not telling her that Kinraid was taken by a press gang), but even before he achieved his goal of marrying her he was subconsciously realizing that having his bird in a cage was not really what he wanted after all. While I've been reading SL, I've been trying to pin down who Philip Hepburn reminds me of--it's Lydgate, of course, from Eliot's Middlemarch.

I wish the narrator hadn't pointed out that Sylvia was married in mourning and the first sounds she heard on entering her home as a bride was the sound of weeping and wailing. As a reader, I would rather have made the connection myself instead of having it pointed out to me.

Sylvia's Lovers - Farmer, Sailor, Tradesman

I'm now about 3/4 through Sylvia's Lovers, and while I haven't warmed to the heroine particularly, I do think the story is interesting and the novel worth reading.

I'm impressed with the historical aspect of the novel. While Gaskell wrote other historical pieces, they are short stories or novellas. This, I believe, is her only full novel that is historical, and it is set during the Napoleonic Wars. Early on, I thought several times how this was a woman's version of Moby Dick--instead of details of life on a whaling ship, we have details of the lives of the women and families of the men on those whaling ships.

I was also struck by the fact that Sylvia, a farmer's daughter, is courted by a sailor and a tradesman, and, like Louisa Musgrove in Austen's Persuasion, she is completely captivated by the men of the sea, though in this case, it's not the patriotic theme as the Navy in SL are the bad guys in the form of the press gangs.

Sylvia's Lovers - Paragraph on Prayer and Narrator's Preaching

Despite Gaskell being a lifelong Unitarian and married to a Unitarian minister, her works are free from overt preaching. She really did let the story stand alone for what it was--whether an exposure of the plight of the working poor in Mary Barton or a sympathetic look at an unwed mother in Ruth, to note the two novels of hers that are the most starkly social-problem novels.

So, I really noticed a passage in Sylvia's Lovers where I think Gaskell, the author and Unitarian, takes over from the narrator and inserts her religious beliefs.

The passage is in Chapter 15, where Philip Henshaw is feeling that his prospects and chances of ultimately marrying Sylvia are looking up, despite Charley Kinraid ruining his time at the Corney's New Years Eve party:

So this night his prayers were more than the mere form that they had
been the night before; they were a vehement expression of gratitude to God for having, as it were, interfered on his behalf, to grant him the desire of his eyes and the lust of his heart. He was like too many of us, he did not place his future life in the hands of God, and only ask for grace to do His will in whatever circumstances might arise; but he yearned in that terrible way after a blessing which, when granted under such circumstances, too often turns out to be equivalent to a curse. And that spirit brings with it the material and earthly idea that all events that favour our wishes are answers to our prayer; and so they are in one sense, but they need prayer in a deeper and higher spirit to keep us from the temptation to evil which such events invariably bring with them.

Despite my general dislike of authors preaching via their novels, I rather like what Gaskell is saying about prayer here. I think the best bit I've read about prayer in a novel is from Chapter 48 of Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns. As Grandpa, aka E. Rucker Blakeslee says, "Jesus meant us to ast God to hep us stand the pain, not beg Him to take the pain away. We can ast for comfort and hope and patience and courage, and to be gracious when thangs ain't goin' our way, and we'll git what we ast for. They ain't no gar'ntee thet we ain't go'n have no troubles and ain't go'n die. But shore as frogs croak and cows bellow, God'll forgive us if'n we ast Him to."

I prefer characters to make these observations as Burns had Rucker do rather than as Gaskell let herself do via her narrator, but perhaps she didn't have a character whom she felt could communicate her feelings on prayer.

Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers

I've just started this and am intrigued. I fear it will be all in dialect, which can be tiresome but Gaskell does such a good job with it that so far I don't mind. At least in North and South, the reader got the Hales as a break from the dialect, but all the characters in Sylvia's Lovers seem to be speaking in dialect.

According to the back of my paperback version, Gaskell reportedly described SL as the saddest story she ever told. I'm steeling myself to tragedy and heartbreak ala Thomas Hardy, but for now it's pleasant. Sylvia Robson is so different from Margaret Hale that I'm a bit prejudiced against her, and I am rather liking the loyal earnestness of Philip Hepburn, but I am quite early in the story.