Book Review: Cranford
Jan. 23rd, 2025 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhen I was in AP English in high school, we took a practice AP test, and one of the excerpts that we read electrified me. “This is from a real book,” I thought, feverishly attempting to memorize enough of the passage to be able to use it as a search term later. “I must find it!”
Fortunately the passage contained the word Cranford, so I swiftly laid hands on Elizabeth Gaskell’s magnum opus.
Okay, I realize those are fighting words, and probably people are taking to the corners to fight for North and South or Wives and Daughters. Rather I should say, my first and still my favorite Elizabeth Gaskell novel, a gentle and charming portrait of the town of Cranford, which is, to quote the first paragraph, “in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women.”
In fact, there are few people less Amazonian than the spinsters and widows of a certain age who make up Cranford society. Gaskell is poking a little fun at their foibles, but this gentle mockery lies on a solid bedrock of affection for the place and the real tenderness and strength beneath the sometimes-silly ultra-gentility.
It’s also a wonderful example of, not exactly the female gaze, but a female perspective. Men are handy at times, and sometimes beloved, but also “so in the way in a house,” and indeed just a bit in the way everywhere, cumbersome and mysterious outsiders. “My father was a man,” Miss Pole says in exasperation, “and I know the sex pretty well.”
It’s just a pleasant world to visit - a sort of spiritual ancestress to the works of Miss Read. A nice book to read when the world is too much with us.
Fortunately the passage contained the word Cranford, so I swiftly laid hands on Elizabeth Gaskell’s magnum opus.
Okay, I realize those are fighting words, and probably people are taking to the corners to fight for North and South or Wives and Daughters. Rather I should say, my first and still my favorite Elizabeth Gaskell novel, a gentle and charming portrait of the town of Cranford, which is, to quote the first paragraph, “in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women.”
In fact, there are few people less Amazonian than the spinsters and widows of a certain age who make up Cranford society. Gaskell is poking a little fun at their foibles, but this gentle mockery lies on a solid bedrock of affection for the place and the real tenderness and strength beneath the sometimes-silly ultra-gentility.
It’s also a wonderful example of, not exactly the female gaze, but a female perspective. Men are handy at times, and sometimes beloved, but also “so in the way in a house,” and indeed just a bit in the way everywhere, cumbersome and mysterious outsiders. “My father was a man,” Miss Pole says in exasperation, “and I know the sex pretty well.”
It’s just a pleasant world to visit - a sort of spiritual ancestress to the works of Miss Read. A nice book to read when the world is too much with us.
