Gaskell Reading Challenge

Katherine at the Gaskell Blog is hosting a Gaskell Reading Challenge, and while I am loathe to participate in official challenges because I like the free-wheeling approach to current selections, I am definitely going to participate in this one.

Katherine has made the challenge very easy, requiring only two works be read, with one being a novel.

Since I loved Sylvia's Lovers, and in fact included Whitby in my itinerary on a trip to the UK in 2009 so that I could visit the town in which it was set, I will be rereading SL for the challenge.

There are a few of Gaskell's short stories/novellas that I still haven't read yet, and so will be reading Lizzie Leigh and Uncle Peter as well. I also hope to get my hands on a collection of Gaskell's letters as well.

I also hope to record more of Gaskell's works, particularly the short stories for LibriVox.

A few years ago, I recorded The Grey Woman and really enjoyed the process. Here is the link to the recording if you would like to listen to it.

The Grey Woman - Portion II

At long last, I was able to put together the time to edit, annotate, illustrate, and upload Portion II of Gaskell's terrific story, The Grey Woman, to my janegs.com website, complete with my audio presentation of same.

In readying this for publication, I listened/read it again, and continue to find it rich, interesting, and compelling.

Hope you enjoy Portion II--here's the link.

Gaskell's The Grey Woman

The Grey Woman was originally published in All the Year Round in 1861, and included in the 1865 Smith, Elder collection, The Grey Woman and Other Tales. Gaskell wrote this story after a trip to Heidelberg while she was working on and feeling frustrated by her lack of progress with Sylvia's Lovers. I see it as an archetypal Bluebeard story--wonderfully gothic with truly spine-tingling scenes and a high concentration of non-conventional elements, including cross-dressing and bigamy for starters.

I've posted Portion I of three parts here. Just click on "Portion I" to get the text. I've also included an audio recording that I did for LibriVox last year if you want to listen as well or instead of reading.

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.

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.