In so many novels, what we call
‘plot’ is really a series of revelations. A mystery is resolved, characters
come to understand each others’ motivations, secrets are made common knowledge,
and society can move on. Life may be filled with unexplained occurrences, but
in the Victorian novel – whether realist or sensational – it is rare for a text
to end with even one of its events still shrouded in obscurity for its
characters.
In this, as in so many ways,
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1851-3)
is a strange novel. Whether the series of stories, first appearing in Household Words, can be called a novel
at all has been hotly debated. They clearly weren’t initially designed as such,
they are tonally dissonant, and they are narrated by a character – Mary Smith –
who is herself shrouded in never-to-be-explained mystery. Yet one of Gaskell’s
most interesting deviations from readerly expectations is in her repeated
concentration on (particularly selfless) acts that are never revealed.
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The cast of the BBC's adaptation of Cranford (2007) |
The narrator Mary, for instance,
is instrumental in returning the errant Peter to his long lost sister Miss
Matty. Yet her part in this happy event is never made clear to the other
characters and she suffers intense guilt about having interfered at all. She
even claims that she is usually at fault for being indiscreet, even though we
see her act throughout the novel with the utmost discretion and tact:
In my own home, whenever people had
nothing else to do, they blamed me for want of discretion. Indiscretion
was my bug-bear fault. Everybody has a bug-bear fault, a sort of standing
characteristic—a pièce de résistance for their
friends to cut at; and in general they cut and come again. I was tired of
being called indiscreet and incautious; and I determined for once to prove
myself a model of prudence and wisdom.
This is not the only example.
Again and again through the novel, characters protect each others’ feelings
with acts of service that are never spoken of, most climactically when the
Cranford ladies band together to save Miss Matty from financial ruin and
supplement her income. This kindness is not only never known by the recipient,
it also involves secrecy amongst the group:
Every lady wrote down the sum she could
give annually, signed the paper, and sealed it mysteriously. If their
proposal was acceded to, my father was to be allowed to open the papers, under
pledge of secrecy.
These hidden demonstrations of
care and affection are definitely gendered. Cranford is dominated by women, but
the men who do live there are able to act in a more straightforward manner,
whether they are acting carelessly (like the young cross-dressing Peter who
recklessly endangers his sister’s reputation) or, like Captain Brown, being
kind in a much more direct and highly visible manner:
We…discussed the circumstance of the
Captain taking a poor old woman’s dinner out of her hands one very slippery
Sunday. He had met her returning from the bakehouse as he came from
church, and noticed her precarious footing; and, with the grave dignity with
which he did everything, he relieved her of her burden, and steered along
the street by her side, carrying her baked mutton and
potatoes safely home. This was thought very eccentric.
Mary’s comments about her
friends’ remarks on her indiscretion point to why this might be so. Cranford’s
women are conditioned to obey certain social strictures, even when acting on
behalf of those other than themselves. This is not to say that they are
repressed – they vigorously defend and enforce these social norms, as they give
them a sense of community and identity.
Gaskell’s strange novel then –
where plot is secondary, and quiet community is preferred to overt
demonstration – could be seen as a novel that is particularly female. In its 16
chapters, she examines the condition of spinsterhood from many angles – often
with humour, sometimes with pathos. And in her concentration on the acts of
service that so often go unseen, she gives us not only a model for a novel
about a women, she gives us a glimpse into women’s history.
Which lesser-known Victorian text
would you like the Secret Victorianist to write on next? Let me know – here, on
Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!
I think Cranford was really a village blog.
ReplyDeleteThat's such a lovely way of putting it!
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