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December 11th, 2008 Katie H.

A while back, someone with a good understanding of my obsession with English costume dramas suggested that I watch Cranford, the new PBS/Masterpiece production based in part on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of the same name.  Having never read anything by Gaskell and associating her, unfairly, with the most sentimental of Victorian English novels, I didn’t get around to the DVDs until recently.  I soon realized that my previous prejudices were completely wrong, and I was smitten.  After enjoying the series, I picked up the original novel, curious as to how Gaskell’s serialized novel of 1853 would stand up to readers 150 years later.

Happily, Cranford turned out to be a throughly enjoyable and surprisingly modern read.  Centered on the tiny town of Cranford in the 1830s, Cranford tells the story of two sisters of a slightly advanced age, trying to maintain a genteel existence while fending off modernity.  Their main comfort is gossip, and since Cranford is populated almost entirely by women in circumstances very similar to their own, Miss Deborah and Miss Matty find plenty to talk about.  Gaskell’s later books are primarily concerned with class differences and an increasingly industrial nation, and through several vignettes, many of the same issues pop up with a more muted tone in Cranford.  Miss Matty hopes to reconnect with a man whose lower class status made him unacceptable in her youth, and the town is thrown into an uproar when suspicious strangers (men, no less) seem to threaten the peace.  In the final chapters, Miss Matty comes to grips with the realization that she might have to undergo a profound change late in life, which even her resourceful friends might be hard-pressed to help with. 

Gaskell creates her characters and their adventures with an affectionate tone that still has a slightly satirical edge (Miss Pole, my favorite character in both book and film, is a creation that both Dickens and Austen would have been proud to have invented).  Yet their stories of struggling to retain their independence despite economic problems and a changing way of life still resontates today.  Fans of such modern authors as Jan Karon, Jennifer Chiaverini and even Debbie Macomber might find the women-centered, small town setting of Cranford to their liking, while neophytes to Gaskell could consider the novel a good introduction to her longer, later works.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction