Wives and Daughters: #6 (chaps 15-17)-- Jan. 1865

Dear Serial Readers,

Just as we expected, the "New Mamma" has brought discontent, unhappiness, and even loss of employment to the Gibson home, yet she seems installed there--redecorating and all (of course she deplored the changes done for her)--for the long haul. Her clash with the servants is another class-laced portrait, especially interesting since she'd been a paid domestic employee herself at the Towers. It's difficult to find one shred of appealing quality about her, isn't it? And yet, Clare's shortcomings are really "everyday" ones, so terribly petty. I find compelling Gaskell's everyday ethics about the small stuff--like Gibson taking his meal quickly so he can get to the bedside of a dying patient or like Molly wishing to bring comfort to Mrs. Hamley.

I also am struck by all the fine details of class markers Gaskell explores. Where her earlier novels Mary Barton and North and South explore class conflict between "masters" and "men" in the realm of factory work, this one also has quite a bit to say about the gradations of social class in Hollingford, England. For instance, Clare (or, "Mrs. Gibson" now) claims her new name is a "sad come-down after Kirkpatrick." And there's the classing of food again--this time, it's not just cheese that offends the new Mamma, but also the early dinner hour. How interesting too that the Methodist cook seems to prefer a diet that follows Leviticus restrictions against pork and "swine-flesh" of Jewish dietary laws.

And speaking of Hollingford, I can't help thinking of Middlemarch. I'm finding parallels between these novels, most sharply between the doctors (Gibson, Lydgate) and their unsuitable, selfish, and conspicuously consuming wives (Clare and Rosamond). But Gibson is a different kind of doctor--he's not "Dr Gibson" but "Mr Gibson" in the novel, a title which implies his training. He's a practitioner who treats disease and by doing so cares for the ill, but he does not have the prestige of a physician who actually diagnoses the disease--that's why Dr. Nicholls, "the great physician of the county," is called in to confirm Gibson's fear about Mrs Hamley. (By the way, another proper name with real-life echoes: "Nicholls" was the name of Charlotte Bronte's husband, someone Gaskell wrote about in her biography of Bronte). Eliot's novel has much to say about medical reform, but I find that Gaskell seems to focus on palliative care--"to make the last struggle easier" as Molly puts it--or bringing comfort at the end of life not just to the dying but to the family.

Kari made a comment last time that suggests that Gaskell is rather gentle with her handling of suspense. I am interested in this question because suspense seems also a technical necessity for a serialized novel--what else would compel readers to go for the next issue of the magazine? What is the nature of suspense in this novel, then? We know that Mrs. Hamley is going to die before long. And we know that Cynthia will return and there will be some complications here between her and her mother and possibly Preston's interest in her, which of course Clare will dislike immensely. And the Hamley brothers will return now from Cambridge--Osborne a big disappointment, but also what's up with him? There are hints that there's more going on with his life than his parents know. He's turned into more of an adventurer than a scholar, with his knowledge of London entertainment and Continental travels. And Roger, the second son, who we can guess will increasingly become the hero? So what kind of suspense is this? How is your curiosity piqued or fed within and between installments?

Next time, chapters 18-20.

Serially yours,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #5 (chaps 12-14) December 1864

Dear Serial Readers,

I agree that there are hints afloat to suggest that the domestic reign of Hyacinth (aka Mrs Gibson, by the end of this installment--I think I counted FOUR different proper names for her this time) will not be especially pleasant for Molly. I also think that when Cynthia does appear from France it's likely there will be some battling wills between this mother and daughter.

I liked how the actual wedding is pushed to the background in this installment which introduces two new characters--Preston and Osborne. Like the attention to cheese eating last time, these chapters too are filled with the fine distinctions of social class: (1) Roger not imagining his romantic ideal could possibly be a surgeon's daughter, (2) the narrator, with that startling intervention ("Attend, Phoebe, to the present moment..."), chiding this character for even fancying that Gibson would consider marrying her, (3) Lady Harriet's unkind condescension of the Browning sisters as "Pecksy and Flapsy"--and Molly's offense that Harriet would treat this "class of people" as "a kind of strange animal," and (4) Lady Harriet's disdain for Preston as "that underbred fop." To Lady H's credit, she takes Molly's offense to heart and pays a visit to the Brownings. To what extent will the novel critique class snobbery or promote some mild cross-class affiliations? Not sure. Gaskell pairs class and gender in interesting ways--the different kinds of femininity (Lady Cumnor, Mrs. Hamley, Miss Browning, Mrs Kirkpatrick) and masculinity (see below) that each seem shaped by material circumstances.

There seems to be a new romance plot brewing via Preston, the land-agent--his muscular manliness contrasts strongly with Osborne's delicate and "effeminate" appearance. Yet he seems conniving too--his lavish attention to Molly perhaps meant to stir jealousy in someone else, Miss Kirkpatrick, I'd guess, from his comments about her beauty. By the way, this issue of The Cornhill includes an illustration before the installment titled "Unwelcome Attentions" with Preston hovering over the dark-haired Molly. I've included it in the sidebar.

Osborne seems a Keatsian kind of guy--"beautiful and languid-looking." Molly tries to sort out her imagined or "ideal" Osborne with "the real" Osborne who clashes with the ideal that is drawn from literary models. The same might apply to Roger who also doesn't measure up to an ideal (or conventionalized) notion of masculinity, but perhaps represents a new version of manliness. I agree with you (Kari, I think) that Roger is the most pleasing of the male characters so far, especially in his kind attention to Molly. And she's already learning about the bees (if not the birds) from him! Roger introduces Molly to a different set of books, not fiction or poetry, but the natural historian Huber on bees.

Briefly, on the contents of the Dec. 1864 issue of the magazine: I didn't find these items to be particularly relevant to the chapters, as I did last month/week. The issue began with the installment from *Armadale* and then an article about the improving relations between England and France through "the bar" or convening of English and French lawyers in London; another item about a popular artist who had recently died; and an article about "Salvers," or those who dredge up salvage from shipwrecks.

Next time: chapters 15-17 for January 1865. Happy New Year! (and a new marriage....)

Serially yours,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #4 (chaps 10-11) November 1864

Dear Serial Readers,

Two chapters this time, both about the second marriage plot--Gibson's proposal to Clare (aka "Hyacinth" and "Mrs. Kirkpatrick") and Molly's reaction to this news. Were you surprised at all the attention and care lavished on these three characters and their various perspectives on this impending marriage? I thought Molly's heart-wrenching reaction to the news of this stepmother on the horizon was wonderfully detailed and varied in the wide range of confused feelings--anger, hurt, fear, surprise, worry, shy curiosity. Gaskell doesn't reduce Clare to a caricature of the wicked stepmother, but clearly she's not an idealized angel either, but rather human-scale in this "every-day" slice of realism, with her own interest in relinquishing the drudgery of schoolteacher. But what did you make of the proposal scene itself, in chap. 10? I loved the narrator's shifting between his and her viewpoints in this proposal that seems overdetermined, Gaskell suggests, by the social attitudes that dictate a second marriage is the best solution for Mr G's domestic woes, for Mrs K's hard lot as a schoolteacher and single mother, and for Molly as unmothered in a house of men. Yet there's much to suggest discomfort too with this overscriptedness.

It occurs to me that Victorian novels are loaded with second marriages of one sort or another, although at what point in the narrative the second marriage enters varies (late, for instance, in Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre). Any thoughts about this second marriage, at least the preview we get in these chapters through the shifting focus on Molly, Clare, and Mr. G? My favorite bit of class comedy was when Clare asks Molly to report on her father's pet likes and dislikes, and discovers to her dismay that he eats cheese! Cheese apparently was a food associated with unrefined tastes, with a strong smell, according to Clare! I also loved Roger Hamley's attempts to comfort Molly either directly (in his awkwardness with words) or indirectly as her "Mentor," leading her out of her misery through distractions. That passage reminded me of Gaskell's preface to her first novel, Mary Barton where she mentions that she turned to fiction writing as a distraction from "circumstances"--she doesn't clarify this, but biographical accounts attribute fiction writing as her husband's suggestion after the death of her very young son.

Reading these two chapters I became curious about what else appeared in the pages of The Cornhill in November 1864. I was quite astonished to see how several items seemed tooled to this novel's interests! Here are the contents of that issue, in order:
1. The lead item is the Prologue (first 3 chapters) of Wilkie Collins's sensation novel Armadale (the only one he published in this magazine)
2. "Middle-Class Education in England" by Harriet Martineau--this article is on female education and begins with this sentence: "If the education of middle-class Boys is a vague and cloudy subject to treat in writing, what is that of Girls?"
3. "A Tête á Tête Social Science Discussion"--complementing the above article is this story told by a father whose wife has just given birth to their ninth daughter--no sons. The narrative takes the form of a discussion by the narrator/father and his friend on the Woman Question, especially about how and whether a woman can support herself outside of marriage. There is also discussion of women's higher education.
4. "The New Mamma"--a drawing presumably referring to the scene between Molly and Clare (see sidebar)
5. The installment of this novel occurs here, in the center of this issue
6. "The Scottish Farm Labourer"--an informative article on this topic. Mr. Gibson is Scottish by background, and this subject of farm labour might figure later in the novel.
7. "At Rest"--consolation poetry about the death of a child, signed B.R.
8. "Col. Gordon's Exploits in China"--a travelogue/imperial adventure account by this explorer
9. "The Public Schools Report"--this item in the form of a letter responding to a report on boys public schools, especially Eton, printed in the July issue.

So, here you have the full context for this slice of our serial novel! Next time: chapters 12-14.

Serially Seconding,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #3 (chaps 7-9) October 1864

Dear Serial Readers,

To respond briefly to comments from last week: yes, reading books seems showcased early on in this novel, with Molly's reading Scott, Mrs. Hamley reading Hemans, the squire reading newspapers and journals, Gibson's more eclectic reading diet, and Roger reading "scientific books" in contrast to Osborne's poetry. "Reading" also means studying, in the scholastic sense used at British universities, and at that time "reading" natural history was certainly less common and supported than reading poetry, which I think was probably aligned more closely with philosophy and theology as a fitting course of study for young men at Cambridge preparing to enter the Anglican clergy. The squire mentions to Molly that "they don't take honours in Natural History at Cambridge," an indication of its lower academic status at this time (late 1820s perhaps). I do love the attention to the pleasures of reading immersion--whether Molly being "deep" into Scott's novel or even the pleasures of reading the flora and fauna of the gardens outdoors.

To continue now with this week's installment: while we meet Roger Hamley, we don't see much evidence of his reading nature; the narrator insists that he would not even notice Molly as a "formed beauty" because she is in "a state of feminine hobbledehoyhood." This word jumped out at me, since those of us who read an earlier serial in The Cornhill, namely Trollope's The Small House at Allington, heard much about Johnny Eames's "hobbledehoyhood." And now, the feminine version!

But if Molly at seventeen seems unripe for that romance plot, we have two middle-aged widowed characters, the former governess at the Towers and Molly's father who is primed for a second marriage to untangle "the Gordian knot of domestic difficulties," which include the averted "calf-love" incident. Gaskell gives lots of details of the converging circumstances of, on the one hand, this single father who can't manage his household, and, on the other, Clare Kirkpatrick, the struggling single mother schoolmistress who's already lost several governess positions. While marriage might promise solutions to their respective problems, there are ample hints that other forms of knottiness might lurk on the horizon of such an alliance. Clare's character is not particularly encouraging despite her early kindness when Molly visits the Towers at age 12, and Gibson, we know, is shortsighted in the realm of human complexities not of a medical nature. I do find the subject of second marriages in Victorian novels surprisingly common--"every-day" as the subtitle suggests.

On "invalid" women, I was interested in an implied comparison of Mrs. Hamley and Lady Cumnor, the first, truly ailing from some disease (as well as from inactivity and longing for her beloved son), the second, perhaps hypochondrical due to her social position as a pampered woman of wealth with grown children and little to engage her. Those passages reminded me of Gaskell's treatment of Mrs. Carson as a "do-nothing" lady in her first novel Mary Barton.

Finally, the character who really intrigued me this time is Lady Harriet, the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Cumnor, who delivers a wry and sharp assessment of the current status of elite female education at home through governesses and masters. I hope to see much more of Lady H. in installments to come!

Next time, only two chapters--10 and 11.

Serially signing off for now,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #2 (chaps 4-6) September 1864

Dear Serial Readers,

I'm also intrigued by the direct or indirect attention to education so far in this novel you've noted--Julia's comments on the Cumnor charity school in contrast to Lowood in Jane Eyre and Joshua's on Mr. Gibson's attitude toward literacy. Then there's quite a bit here about the public school educations of the two Hamley sons (perhaps in contrast to Molly's meagre education by Miss Eyre).

I must say, though, that I understood Gibson's reluctance for Molly to learn too much as pertaining to his feelings about her growing up. Perhaps because I have a seventeen year old daughter myself who is currently in the process of applying to college, I was struck by the Hamleys and Gibson wrestling with their children's increasing autonomy and departures from home. Around the time Gaskell began working on this novel, her daughter Florence married in 1863. Gaskell handles Gibson's fears about Molly leaving with terrific irony since his concern about the "calf-love" threatened by Edward Coxe compels him to send Molly away from him to Hamley, where, of course, two sons are bound to visit on holiday from school.

Gibson's uneasiness about Molly growing up and leaving him has two other parallels: Mrs. Hamley missing her sons, especially the poetic Osborne (who presumably takes after her in contrast to the outdoorsy, naturalist Roger, more like the father) and then Molly's fear at the end of this installment about the possibility of his father remarrying, an event that would necessarily affect the intimacy of this father and daughter. Rather than "Wives and Daughters" a more inclusive title would be "Parents and Children." These opening segments make evident a focus on changes in parent/child relationships as children move into adulthood. This is especially so for Molly and her father. Yes, the serpent in the Edenic garden of Molly's childhood does emerge as this installment closes with the squire considering, "To be sure, a step-mother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man." How will the next one end, I wonder?

Returning to the theme of literacy, I also noted the attention to reading in these chapters--reading books (poetry, novels, scientific writing), reading human nature, and reading nature.
Characters are sorted by their reading tastes or abilities--Molly reads historical novels (Scott, in this instance), while the squire tells Molly about Roger's remarkable capacity to read natural history through nature--"his eyes are always wandering about, and see twenty things where I only see one." As a doctor, Gibson is an astute reader of nature as it affects human bodies, but (returning to my comment last time) we get the sense that he's not a sharp reader of his own feelings and motivations: "He did not want to lose the companionship of his child, in fact; but he put it to himself in quite a different way." Other observations about reading practices in these chapters?

Finally, I wanted to mention the subtitle of this novel, although I don't know if it appeared with the original magazine serialization: "An Every-Day Story." I like this accent on ongoingness, on commonness, rather than the extraordinary. I'm hoping that one of these weeks some one of us will peak at the original Cornhill appearance of these chapters to see what other everyday stories surrounded segments of the novel. I'll try to remember for next week: chapters 7-9.

Serially submerged,
Susan

Susan

Wives and Daughters: #1 (chaps 1-3) August 1864

Dear Serial Readers,

Off we go on another Victorian serial adventure--this one with the auspicious beginnings of a fairytale "rigmarole." The fairytale motif is evident and sweet, with allusions to Goldilocks when Molly falls asleep under the cedar tree and later wakes inside the grand house in Clare's bed. But there are other tales suggested in these opening pages--perhaps Cinderella with the ordinary people taken by serial carriage rides to the Towers festival, but also an evident wink at Jane Eyre through Molly's governess's name. I couldn't help seeing echoes in a reverse chronological direction, with Mr. Gibson, the new doctor to Hollingford, who had studied in Paris, as a precursor to Eliot's Lydgate who arrives in Middlemarch near the opening of that novel, and in the days before the passage of the First Reform Bill. I wonder how else Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) might be compared to this novel.

I also wonder about the role of sleep in building a new fictional world--Molly falls asleep in what appears to her as an Edenic dreamland, although she suffers from the hothouse atmosphere too. I began thinking about sleep and visionary realms in the early pages of novels--this too reminds me of the opening of Eliot's The Mill on the Floss where the narrator falls asleep while looking back in time. Is falling into a new narrative world like the opening of a dream? There is something gently parodic about Gaskell's use of the fairytale motif too in this first segment of the novel, which concludes with an assertion about Molly's "very happy childhood." Is some serpent, some apple, some Eve, to intrude upon this quaint English paradise? Mr Gibson is a fond father, but seems a bit emotionally dense--I recall Eliot's description of Lydgate as "an emotional elephant."

The brief glimpses of the greenery of the Towers as well as Lady Agnes's lecture on orchids and attention to the taxonomy of plants also reminded me of Gaskell's Job Legh, a working-class naturalist in her first novel Mary Barton. Charles Darwin was a distant cousin of Gaskell's, and there's a character, soon to appear, supposedly modeled after the young Charles Darwin who preferred botanising or geologising in the hills to his studies at Cambridge. Botany was also a popular activity for women to pursue as a hobby but also as a way to educate themselves about the natural world.

I look forward to your thoughts about this dreamy opening! For next week, the second installment includes chapters 4-6. There were 18 installments altogether printed in The Cornhill Magazine.

Serially yours,
Susan

Upcoming Serial: Gaskell's Wives and Daughters

Dear Serial Readers,

The results of the poll are clear: Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, serialized monthly in The Cornhill from August 1864 to January 1866, is our next Victorian serial. Yes, this is the same magazine that ran Trollope's Small House of Allington. I recommend the Oxford UP edition (see sidebar) because the table of contents provides the installment divisions. But no matter about this, since I'll indicate each week what group of chapters comprise the next installment. We'll begin in two weeks (to allow time for people to obtain copies), and I'll aim to post on the first installment, chapters 1-3, on Sunday October 11th. Please spread the word! As an added attraction, there is a lovely BBC adaptation of this novel, and I have a copy for anyone nearby to borrow--or perhaps we'll have a serial viewing party!

In the meantime, do share your thoughts on the ending of Romola! You can insert comments at the end of the previous post below!

Serially yours,
Susan