Wives and Daughters (111 page)

4. Gaskell never gives us an explicit account of Cynthia’s character, but rather wisely leaves it up to examples. What is the nature of Cynthia’s character? Describe it in all its ambiguities and contradictions.

5. Do you agree that Molly is less interesting than Cynthia? How is Cynthia’s happy ending a “generous revenge,” as Henry James puts it, on the idea that Cynthia’s character is hopeless? Does Cynthia act badly toward her various suitors (as Dr. Gibson believes)?

6. Gaskell’s methodology is one of a “simple record of the innumerable small facts of the young girl’s daily life.” Can Cynthia be excused of her fickleness and malleable character because of her upbringing? How is Molly’s conduct and morality superior? Is her superiority a result of something other than her upbringing?

7. Cynthia seems almost universally fascinating in the novel; most of the men, and even Molly, fall in love with her. Try to pinpoint the nature of Cynthia’s fascination. Is she sexually alluring? What else constitutes her appeal? Do you think the novel critiques Cynthia for the sexual aspect of her character; if so, why?

Easson, Angus.
Elizabeth Gaskell
. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 19 7 9 .

Foster, Shirley.
Elizabeth
Gaskell:A
Literary Life
. Basingstoke and New York: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2002.

Gaskell, Elizabeth.
The Letters of Mrs.
Gaskell. Edited by J. A. V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1966.

.
The Life of Charlotte
Brontë. Edited by Jenny Uglow with revisions by Graham Handley. London: Everyman, 1997.

Gérin, Winifred.
Elizabeth
Gaskell:A
Biography
. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

James, Henry. “Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell.” In
Literary Criticism: Volume 1: Essays on Literature, American Writers
, and English Writers, edited by Leon Edel. New York: Library of America, 1984.

Uglow, Jenny.
Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993.

Craik, W A.
Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Provincial Novel.
London: Methuen, 1975.

D’Albertis, Deirdre.
Dissembling Fictions: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Social
Text. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Flint, Kate.
Elizabeth Gaskell.
Plymouth, UK: Northcote House, 1995.

Langland, Elizabeth.
Nobody’s Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Homans, Margaret.
Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth
-
Century
Women’s Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Lansbury, Coral.
Elizabeth Gaskell.
Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

Schor, Hilary M.
Scheherezade in the Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Novel
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Stoneman, Patsy.
Elizabeth Gaskell.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Wright, Terence R.
Elizabeth Gaskell “We are not
Angels”:
Realism, Gender, Values
. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 1995.

The following is an excellent Web site dedicated to Elizabeth Gaskell:
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/gaskell.html
. The site is well-maintained and thorough, with a very good bibliography, links to e-texts of Gaskell’s work, and biographical information. It is the work of Mitsuhara Matsuoka, a scholar from Nagoya University in Japan.

David, Deirdre, ed.
Cambridge Companion to
the Victorian
Novel
. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Helsinger, Elizabeth K., Robin Lauterbach Sheets, and William Veeder, eds.
The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America
1837-1883. New York: Garland, 1983.

Richetti, John, ed.
The Columbia History of the British Novel
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Tucker, Herbert F., ed.
A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture
. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

Watt, Ian P.
The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.