![]() ![]() The plotlines – a mésalliance between a titled lady and one of the town’s few virile men, a financial scandal, a beturbanned magician, a prodigal’s return – were probably pretty sensational when the novel was first published, but are most important as the frame on which Gaskell constructs a beguiling picture of a dying society. ![]() Yet neither Mary’s narrow field of focus nor the delicacy of her humour preclude sharp observations about the frailties of human nature or warnings of the disruption that events in the wider world are about to visit on her unsuspecting friends. Clare Wille is delightfully warm and compassionate as the young narrator Mary Smith, fondly recounting the “elegant economies” of her Cranford circle of spinsters and widows. So the desperate gentlewomen keep busy sublimating more basic urges into a passion for Victorian social niceties. The women are in charge, because the men mostly have business elsewhere. Welcome to the quiet backwater of Cranford. Titles by Elizabeth Gaskell Titles by Elizabeth Gaskell Cousin Phillis (unabridged) Cranford (unabridged) North and South (abridged) North and South (unabridged) Wives and Daughters (abridged) Wives and Daughters (unabridged) Reviews ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |