Sea-stained letters
A source of sorrow to the Hale family is the injustice inflicted on their son and brother, Frederick. Wanted for...
Stone-coped house
This is the first visit Margaret makes to a contact given the Hale family by a friend of her father’s....
Tender-coloured sky
Elizabeth Gaskell was a Victorian novelist and a friend of Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote. I see her as...
Grating tones and scraping slates
The early 19th century equivalent of scratching chalk down a blackboard, setting your teeth on edge. Molly is one of...
Roll your own, but don’t swallow them
Dr Gibson, the wry Scottish hero of this best of Gaskell novels, suffers a series of underwhelming apprentices, often to...
Fresh-gathered roses
This is a bright spot in a serious story, a guest room scented by roses crushed into water to release...
Three-tailed bashaw
In this story, the stepmother isn’t wicked, she’s just stupid and pretentious. And calculating. She has a daughter and a...
Barriers to hope
I like this metaphor in which a looming shape in the fog evokes a barrier to hope. Â That said, may...
Like sunlight on a landscape
You can see an overcast English landscape of rolling hills and fields, and a sudden break in the clouds pierced...
The innovation of envelopes
They’re so ubiquitous that it’s a surprise to learn envelopes were a mid-nineteenth century invention. Somewhere in Gaskell I remember...
Refinement, one stair at a time
Wise as he is, Mr. Gibson makes one wrong move in his life, marrying a fizzy, dizzy woman, causing grief...
A cut above the rest
The clear-cut class divide wasn’t as neat and sharp as the speaker’s comments imply. In fact, there was some fluidity...
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