Examining The Themes Of Conservative Class

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

It is ostensible that Elizabeth Gaskell's literary works and existence are being ascertained against a context of Victorian bourgeois women's experience by respective feminist scholars. The nineteenth century is unanimously considered to be a conventional and conservative era; therefore Gaskell may alternatively be regarded as a revolutionary and radical women for her time. Gaskell was renowned for challenging broad-brimmed assumptions about the nature of women, their 'proper' domain, and their engagement in the public realm.

Examining the themes of conservative class and gender issues within Gaskell's novels, it is acknowledgeable that Gaskell was a Victorian novelist who was an effective advocate of revolutionary change as she tried to create a realm for vocational women within the nineteenth century;

"....Elizabeth Gaskell had faith in her sex as more than just the Victorian ideal of the "angel in the house" and was determined to show that her heroines would not pale in the face of adversity but change and adapt and become stronger for the challenge, for without challenge or change comes stagnation." [1] It is evident that Elizabeth Malcolm similarly held the viewpoint that Gaskell employed the stance within the conservative Victorian era of a radical woman and furthermore expressed the opinion that Gaskell was renowned for not emitting gender issues prevent her contesting the conservative societal issues which arose.

I would consider Gaskell's novel Mary Barton to employ elements of industrialisation which contributes to the questioning as to whether Gaskell's novels are conservative about class issues during the Victorian era, but radical about women. However Gaskell can be seen to differ from various other novelists in utilising the element of industrialisation within Mary Barton and therefore Gaskell could be regarded as having no dispute or ulterior motive to take up with society.

Although I believe that Gaskell does indeed have a dispute and ulterior motive to take-up with society within this novel and in her subsequent novels as she appears to concentrate on the tribulations women faced during nineteenth century England.

Throughout Mary Barton Gaskell utilises the industrial novel as a means of enabling her to criticise the paramount political theory that separates both the male and female sexes from one another in a bid to form a feminist argument about women's requirement for purposeful occupations in order to confirm their suitability for engagement within the public domain. I conceive Gaskell to challenge through this novel the Victorian construct of a gender division of social class that is responsible for the separation of the public and private domains.

However, a female writer within the nineteenth century whom has a dispute and ulterior motive to take-up with society must tread cautiously and be increasingly tactful; I consider however Gaskell to be entirely conscious of the perils involved alongside her reputation and that of her husband and his ministry were at jeopardy.

It is evident that Gaskell's first novel Mary Barton establishes that the composition of this novel was for her a subject of imperative urgency entwined with aspects of anxiety which could be the reasoning behind her anonymous publication. Gaskell's sense of anxiety is evidently distinct within her letters to Mary Ewart when she is identified as the author as she states;

"I did write it, but how did you find it out? I do want it to be concealed if possible, and I don't think anybody here has the least idea who is the author... I am almost frightened at my own action in writing it". [2] I would regard Gaskell as being accurate for having a need to be uneasy about such a revelation of authorship as numerous scholars demoed disapproval and consequently her publication of the novel brought forth the onset of literary criticism from those who passed judgement that she was unsuccessful in representing the perspective of social control.

Similarly Cranford is perhaps a frequently incomprehensible literary novel in which Gaskell composed between the publication of Mary Barton and North and South. As I considered both Mary Barton and North and South to be two industrialised literary writings which I believe to associate umpteen relating issues, I would consider myself to have discussed them consecutively. However, as the chronology of Gaskell's literary compositions are indicative, it is therefore suggests that Gaskell's elementary transition in voyaging between both these differing economic systems makes it suggestible that the ostensibly fragmented systems displays the magnitude to which they are related in her own knowledge and literary writings which could be perceived as Gaskell displaying notions of a radical nature.

Disregarding the eminence that numerous literary critics have made between the writing genres of the industrial novel and the idealised or unsustainable episode, I do not believe that Gaskell formed any distinction in her own mind.

I consider when Gaskell's novel Cranford is paralleled with the "industrial novels" [3] such as Mary Barton and North and South that similar themes and issues can be acknowledged.

It is evident that Cranford has been by numerous literary critics discounted as a mere peculiar periodical novel concerning existence in a diminutive English village. I conceive that as Gaskell's Cranford does not make it apparent that it engages with nineteenth century societal issues which are covertly apparent in some of Gaskell's more reputable novels, perhaps this has led to Cranford being incorrectly defined as portraying a much more 'rose-tainted' representation of Victorian society. Despite the opinion of numerous literary critics who depicted Cranford as supposedly idyllic, I was astonished to uncover themes of romantic dissatisfaction, estrangement, unlawful misconduct, financial devastation as well as death. Nonetheless, Gaskell's ostensible alteration in direction from the scrutiny of public perils within the Capitalist economic system to the scrutiny of privatised economic tribulations in my mind does not communicate a withdrawal from the issues within fragmented society, but rather displays a radical attitude which Gaskell intensively engages with the nineteenth century perils of society; "I'll not listen to reason," she said, now in full possession of her voice, which had been rather choked with sobbing. "Reason always means what someone else has got to say." [4] 

Like Gaskell's novels Mary Barton and North and South, her novel The Life of Charlotte Bronte analyses the relation between the public and the private economic systems. I consider it apparent that The Life of Charlotte Bronte encounters the issue of female vocation by strategically acknowledging the life of a women whereby choosing to commit to a literary occupation had become the target of public antagonism as a consequence of the means in which she pursued this career; as a result Bronte could be considered to be a revolutionary radical woman.

Evidently the audience which addressed The Life of Charlotte Bronte was critical of what was thought to be Gaskell's lurid fiction, however as a biographer and a friend Gaskell wholeheartedly defended Bronte's literature.

Gaskell was conscious of the worth of her confident and secure reputation, as a result Gaskell was determined to convey Bronte to a marginalised audience that currently held views of her as aberrant and clairvoyant in a bid to remove such prejudices and enable her to become accepted into the community of women;

"…women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer...it is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex." [5] 

Nonetheless, as Gaskell encountered an antagonistic public perception, Gaskell furthermore attempted to unveil the private life of Bronte as a means to assemble Bronte's public representation as an author. Gaskell's pursuit to place a degree of emphasise upon the feminine aspects of Bronte which could in turn be perceived as typical of Victorian feminists such as Emily Davies, Frances Power Cobbe, Josephine Butler, and Millicent Garrett Fawcet [6] t whom often focus their controversies in terms of what would be considered as 'acceptable' to their nineteenth century culture.

On the contrary, I would consider Gaskell's literary writing to be much more than a mere defence mechanism of friendship and assistance from a fellow writer; Instead I consider it comprehensible that Gaskell desired a radical and revolutionary reformation within her culture's perception of femininity by establishing that a woman's vocation is not conflicting with her expected family obligations. Evidently I would consider it suggestible that as Gaskell wrote about the life of Charlotte Bronte that she counsels her once conservative culture to appreciate the vocation of women universally within society.

Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte was considered to be merely a novelistic account of the radical and revolutionary feminist, Charlotte Bronte it could also be suggested that perhaps Gaskell was propelled in a sense as she felt it necessary to face up to her own equivocal status as a woman within the literary realm during the nineteenth century Victorian period.

Throughout Gaskell’s literary vocation it is increasingly apparent that she remained engrossed with regards to the issue of disrcimination females were subjected to as a consequence of employment;

With regards to Gaskell’s primative novel Mary Barton, it is apparent that she places emphasis upon the working-class character whom sought financed employment on the outskirts of her residency. Following Gaskell’s primative novel her composition of North and South can be perceived to place an emphasis upon a middle-class women, whom is the daughter of a Unaterian minister who engages in a vocations which lacks financial aid as a revenue for societal reformation.

Gaskell’s literary novel Cranford is perceived to address issues such as women whom inspite of impoverty still survive the suffering they are subjected to from within their own economical system. Within The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Gaskell is deemed to convey through her novel the existence of a middle-class woman who’s engaged in a governess vocation, being a literary author alongside her obligatory domestic duties within the family household.