Cranford was
written in installments in the 1850s for Charles Dickens's periodical Household Words, and
in some ways it is more like a series of sketches than a novel with the
traditional buildup to a climax and then a denouement. Nothing in the
way of a turning point in the action happens in Cranford, and
indeed there is little action. Cranford
nonetheless is unified by its setting, characters, and sedate tone
reflective of village life.
Everything takes place in Cranford, a fictional British village about
20 miles from a city called Drumble (Manchester). The genteel elderly
ladies who are at the center of the comedy of manners never leave or
desire to leave Cranford, a town that seems frozen in time. Male
characters are peripheral, and some of Cranford's ladies even look on
marriage as a misfortune. Never married or widowed, they visit one
another and drink tea, play cards, and unmaliciously gossip. Gaskell
— through narrator Mary Smith — gently satirizes
some of their ways, but she loves these women, and generations of
readers have loved them, too. They are not wealthy, but they live by a
code of respectability, modesty, and kindness. In the kindest of them
all, Miss Matty, Gaskell creates a model of charity. Gaskell concludes
the book with Mary Smith writing, "We all love Miss Matty, and I
somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us."
This old-fashioned society might seem irrelevant, although as we get to
know these small-town 19th-century women, they seem surprisingly
familiar. Like every good novelist, Gaskell knew human nature. If
you're looking for gentle company over a pot of tea on a quiet
afternoon, you might want to invite in the ladies of Cranford.
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