The Themes Of Elizabeth Gaskell 1st Ed. 1980

Elizabeth Gaskell once expressed her belief that to live an active and sympathetic life was the indispensable prelude to producing fiction which had strength and vitality in it. This was certainly true in her own case. By the time Mary Barton appeared in 1848, she had a wide experience of the areas of life which were to provide her major themes. Nor did literary fame prevent her from continuing to take part in the spheres of activity to which she was already committed. Neither her temperament nor her circumstances inclined her to the self-absorption which is the pleasure and the peril of a different order of genius. She was receptive to the atmosphere of her age as well as to the varied happenings which filled her busy days. Before considering the themes of her work, it is desirable to look briefly at the sources, personal and social, from which they evolved. Her father William Stevenson, born at Berwick-on-Tweed in 1772, belonged to a naval family. By temperament, however, he was a scholar, not a sailor, though he had a hereditary love of the sea. As the family were Dissenters, Oxford and Cambridge were closed to him, but he became a divinity student at Manchester Academy and subsequently minister at the Unitarian chapel at Failsworth, near Manchester. It was while there that he met Elizabeth Holland, who belonged to a long-established Cheshire yeoman family, whom he married in 1797. He had resigned from the ministry before his marriage and was soon to begin the erratic career in which his many Front Matter....Pages i-xii Biographical background....Pages 1-13 The natural scene....Pages 14-36 The social scene....Pages 37-63 The industrial scene....Pages 64-87 The family....Pages 88-111 The individual....Pages 112-138 Mystery and the macabre....Pages 139-149 Religion....Pages 150-176 Form....Pages 177-201 Back Matter....Pages 202-217