First of all, I love this story, I have seen the BBC movie
multiple times and it has always been the perfect antidote to depression. Not
so the book.
At first I was swept up into the minutiae of this
"Every-Day Story," Molly Gibson is as charming as ever, the perfect
semi-educated, not too beautiful heroine that we must learn to love and
appreciate as a foreign specimen under a microscope. It is with careful
observation that she is tested and proved the superior object in contrast to
her beautiful, coquettish step-sister. But while one learns to appreciate all
of Molly's quiet unobtrusive charms, which happens in about 5 pages, one must suffer
through another 600 pages of the most banal of "fairytales".
I found this book to be frustrating on so many levels. Unlike
Margaret Hale, the protagonist of an earlier novel, North and South, little "goosey" Molly Gibson is the prim
and proper quiet little angel that never argues or presumably raises her voice,
except for one moment where she breaks character and somewhat chews Lady
Harriet out for referring to her friends, the Miss Brownings, as Pecksy and
Flapsy. While I commend Molly's flushed, red in the face defiance of a member
of the peerage...I only wish she was that spirited for the duration of the
book, instead she receives insult upon insult with only a quiet tear here and
there while she comforts herself in the quiet solitude of her lonely heart.
North and South
was an industrial novel and as such there was the requisite soliloquies on
labor laws and unions, and while Margaret was passive in a way, she had the
gumption to throw herself in front of an angry mob to protect a man she
somewhat despised. Molly feels like the heroine you would write if you were on
vacation and thinking of ways to extend a book contract in order to secretly
purchase a little country house as a surprise for your husband. Allegedly,
Charles Dickens, a friend and her editor at times encouraged her to get to the
point in a more expedited manner and that's saying something.
There is a bit of the cherry-picking from ones life that
also adds a certain lazy character writing. Mr. Gibson, a Scot (like Gaskell's
own father) in a sly way represents how wrong educated men can sometimes be. In
an attempt to save Molly's maidenhood, he hastily marries an old friend of his
and recent widow, with her own daughter about Molly's age, Cynthia. The irony
is that Molly is the most pragmatic and chaste of the three women and more apt
to keep her own virtue unsullied on her own than with the help of the new duo.
In fact, it is from this very hasty marriage, that Molly must defend and
protect her new sister from one scandal after another - sullying her name and
for a while becoming an untouchable to the small Hollingford community. Of
course Cynthia is too beautiful and full of her many charms to spend much
thought on the inconvenience of others and instead mesmerizes and entraps one
suitor after another, ending the book with four proposals and a marriage.
One of her many misguided suitors is the good Roger Hamley,
who although does not actually develop as a character, after being jilted
happens to look around the room, and when Molly has on a new dress and her hair
done in an elaborate way, finally is capable of noticing her. This is horrible,
disgusting and everything I hate about fluffy romance plotlines. While the
reader is supposed to admire and appreciate her for her many qualities, it
isn't until she's wearing a new dress that she gets noticed by the second hand
love interest. And while Roger is supposed to represent this new age of
"Muscular Christianity" and the advent of Naturalism, loosely based
on Gaskell's cousin, Charles Darwin, I'm sure if Darwin ever condescended to
read this book it would be a distasteful likeness. While Gaskell paints Roger
as a scientific researcher, going on all sorts of expeditions on his own
veritable "Beagle" she also makes him a romantic. And after two years
gallivanting around Africa , contracting one
travelers disease after another, having his brother die and his fiancé run off
with another man he comes home a burly, bearded bear of a man and is impressed
with silk? I feel like it would have been a bit more true to the point if we
saw his own hastily scrawled pros vs. cons list with "constant companion,
(friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, object to be beloved and
played with - better than a dog anyhow - home and someone to take care of the
house...ergo I will propose to Molly Gibson!"
As I was reading this book, I felt so frustrated by the lazy
uninspired portrayal of women. Molly sits quietly by, waiting for what good or
bad fate has in store for her. While
Cynthia, is far from idle, constantly flirting with anyone wearing pants, there
is still the same sort of ineffectual lack of agency. She threatens to become a
governess in Russia whenever she is feeling particularly provoked...and one
wishes she would have made good on her threat and exited the narrative scene stage
left. Then of course there's Mrs. Gibson the provocateur of all ones fetid
hates distilled into a single character. Her monologues are literally endless
and while Gaskell died suddenly and was unable to finish the book, the unfortunate
ending is given to Mrs. Gibson's endless prattling:
"You might have allowed me to beg for a new gown for
you, Molly, when you knew how much I admired that figured silk at Brown's the
other day. And of course, I can't be too selfish as to get it for myself, and
you to have nothing. You should learn to understand the wishes of other people.
Still, on the whole, you are a dear, sweet girl, and I only wish - well, I know
what I wish; only dear papa does not like it to be talked about. And now cover
me up close, and let me go to sleep, and dream about my dear Cynthia and my new
shawl!"
Overall, I can not help feeling a certain sadness for
Gaskell, what a terrible book to go out on. Gaskell contributed to the same
magazines as Anthony Trollope (The Way We
Live Now) and Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone) both of which had more
respect for their heroines than Gaskell. While Gaskell's heroines are weakly,
fainting types that are constantly in need of a big burly man to rescue them
both Collins and Trollope treat their heroines with far more respect. Granted
Marian Farley, the heroine of The Woman
in White was an ugly George Elliot type that was brilliant at unraveling
one web of intrigue after another but was unmarriageable and destined to spend
her days with her beautiful and marriageable damsel in distress half sister.
It's almost impossible to compare Gaskell and Trollope
except to say Trollope wins. He is expansive while she is simplistic. His
characters grow and transform while hers live one dimensional lives waiting for
their writer to have her way with them. While Trollope champions the cause of
women and the complexities their limited options allow them, they are all
astute and pragmatic regarding what they want and what bull they must grab by
the horns. His women are forced into creative forms of entrepreneurship as they
struggle actively to take agency in their fates while Gaskell's are forced to wait idly by for their men to eventually recognize them and by doing so breathe legitimacy into their ineffectual lives.
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