Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Gaskell
-
Standard Name: Gaskell, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
Nickname: Lily
Married Name: Elizabeth Gaskell
Indexed Name: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Pseudonym: Cotton Mather Mills
Pseudonym: The Author of Mary Barton etc.
Self-constructed Name: E. C. Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
, one of the foremost fiction-writers of the mid-Victorian period, produced a corpus of seven novels, numerous short stories, and a controversial biography of Charlotte Brontë
. She wrote extensively for periodicals, as well as producing novels directly for the book market, often on issues of burning interest: her industrial novels appeared in the midst of fierce debate over class relations, factory conditions and legislation; Ruth took a fallen woman and mother as its protagonist just as middle-class feminist critique of gender roles emerged. Gaskell occupies a bridging position between Harriet Martineau
and George Eliot
in the development of the domestic novel.
CB
's stay in Brussels (as well as contributing eventually to Villette) produced a number of French exercises or devoirs, plus her subsequent letters to Constantin Heger
. Four of the letters (of which...
Textual Features
Charlotte Brontë
The novel focuses on the Luddite riots in Yorkshire in the Napoleonic era. Shirley Keeldar, an heiress with a man's name who revels in her unconventionality (and who was, according to conversation Elizabeth Gaskell
had...
Family and Intimate relationships
Emily Brontë
His eventual position as a clergyman and published author in early nineteenth-century England was, given his background, a considerable accomplishment. Notwithstanding Elizabeth Gaskell
's portrait of him in her biography of his daughter as an...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anne Brontë
Patrick Brontë
was an Irish protestant from a large, respectable farming family of limited means. He took to books from an early age, opened a school for the gentry at the age of sixteen, became...
Health
Emily Brontë
EB
apparently had a very independent character. In a famous incident related to Elizabeth Gaskell
by Charlotte
, Emily tried to help a possibly rabid dog, only to have it bite her. She immediately went...
Residence
Anne Brontë
Despite the depiction of the village as an isolated, primitive place full of uneducated, violent inhabitants (by Elizabeth Gaskell
in her Life of Charlotte Brontë), it was a busy mill town of about 4,500...
Literary responses
Emily Brontë
Since the early criticism which took its lead from Charlotte's biographical portrait, a biographical and hagiographic industry has arisen around all three Brontë sisters and their home in Haworth. A. Mary F. Robinson
published...
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Brontë
Elizabeth Gaskell
initiated her friendship with CB
by her sympathetic comments about the sickbed scenes in Shirley.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
615
Travel
Charlotte Brontë
CB
visited her neighbours Sir James
and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth
in the Lake District, where she met Elizabeth Gaskell
.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
631, 651, 653
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Shelston, Alan, Penguin.
417
Travel
Charlotte Brontë
CB
visited Elizabeth Gaskell
in Manchester on her way back to Haworth.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
681
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Brontë
Elizabeth Gaskell
visited CB
at Haworth for four days.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
738
Textual Features
Vera Brittain
In her Prologue, VB
cited Mrs Gaskell
's Life of Charlotte Brontë as an influence. She also lamented the absence of positive representations of female friendship: I hope that Winifred's story may do something to...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
There are occasional moments of wit, as when destitution reveals that the family servants think terms of practical life rather than sentimental fiction: the old-fashioned type of servant, who appears so frequently in Morton
's...
