Bossy Spotlight: Dame Margaret on her One True Victorian Love, Elizabeth Gaskell

As if I could ever look anywhere else, Mr. Thornton.

It feels like a vicious falsehood to call 2017 my year of Elizabeth Gaskell, as I really fell in love with her in 2006 (when I wrote my senior history thesis on her first novel, Mary Barton) and every year since has been enriched by her work in ways big and small. But I do feel like 2017 could be the year Elizabeth Gaskell enters your life and brings you some comfort.

Her work hits, for me, the perfect midway point between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Where Austen’s work is focused on the parochial almost the point of claustrophobia, Gaskell took advantage of the broader scope and larger page count common to mid-19th century writing, allowing herself to address both the intricacies of female social interactions AND the plight of disenfranchised mill workers. And where Dickens’s characters and moral lessons frequently lack shading, relying on either Impossibly Noble or Cartoonishly Villainous characters, Gaskell never shies away from complexity in either the people or the issues she depicts. Her books are about basically decent but flawed people trying their hardest, misunderstanding one another, and learning, very slowly, to do a very little better. Gaskell depicts almost no disputes where one side must wholeheartedly capitulate to another — there is a sympathetic human impulse driving even the worst actions of her most unscrupulous characters.

The current political climate has alienated me from that understanding of the world, and it’s right that it should — it’s not that imagining sympathetic reasons why individuals might have voted for Donald Trump is impossible. It’s that determining why they might have made that choice will do nothing to protect the vulnerable populations endangered by it, and that’s where I need to invest my energy. But being able to step into a fictional world where people are mostly good, where change happens because good people take time to listen and understand one another, where ingrained prejudices can be overcome by new lived experiences, and ones that are funny and warm and romantic to boot — I find it restorative, and centering, and I hope you will, too. With that in mind, here is my Guide on How to Gaskell:

The Classic Microscope Head Bump Meet Cute

As a reader, I typically recommend starting with books BUT, in this case, the BBC miniseries that have been made out of Gaskell’s novels are SO EXTREMELY GOOD that I actually want to recommend that you start there. Victorian novels can sometimes be a tough sell if you aren’t used to the circumlocutions and preponderance of parenthetical clauses that mark their style. I often have an easier time enjoying them if I’ve seen a really good adaptation first — knowing the plot in advance allows me to relax into the pacing, and having heard the lines of dialogue spoken gives you an idea of where the emphasis will fall and what some of the coded terms mean, both of which can be essential for finding the wit in the writing.

So, in that spirit, if you have ever enjoyed any costume drama, I’m going to strongly recommend that you go right ahead and buy the complete Elizabeth Gaskell Collection on DVD. This set contains adaptations of Gaskell’s three best novels: North & South, Cranford, and Wives & Daughters (her final novel). All three adaptations are among the strongest that the BBC has ever produced — in fact, North & South might be their best adaptation of all time, including the 1995 Pride & Prejudice (FIGHT ME). You will be REALLY GLAD to own them.

You, running to buy these DVDs as if FINE FRENCH LACE were at stake.

But if you want to ease your way into things, you can watch North & South on Netflix THIS VERY EVENING. Plotwise, it is basically Pride & Prejudice & Labor Relations — Margaret Hale, the daughter of an ex-Vicar, moves from the sleepy, agricultural south of England to the smoky, coarse, manufacturing north, where she meets John Thornton, a self-made titan of industry. Misunderstandings ensue, sparks fly, and— most intriguing— labor riots and unions are grappled with in way that’s very advanced for the 19th century. It is exquisitely filmed and one of the rare adaptations that I actually prefer to the original source material — which is also excellent, incidentally! Just more mired in 19th century respectability politics than this gently but perfectly updated adaptation is. Really, the ideal gateway drug to Gaskell.

AND THEN, once you’re all the way in, please please please read Wives and Daughters or — if you can absorb a Victorian novel effectively via audiobook — grab Prunella Scales’ unabridged performance of the text. But really, start wherever — with Gaskell, it’s hard to go wrong.