Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore's Reviews > Wives and Daughters

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell’s last novel is incomplete, but has enough for us to be able to tell how things would end. The is the story of the Gibsons; Mr Gibson, a country surgeon, is a widower with a young daughter Molly. When Molly begins to grow older, Mr Gibson feels that someone is needed at home to look after and ‘protect’ her which he can’t do with his busy schedule, being away from home much of the time. As a result, he ends up rather abruptly marrying a widow Mrs Kirkpatrick, who runs a school, and has a daughter of her own, about the same age as Molly. Mrs Kirkpatrick isn’t a stereotypical stepmother, but isn’t a loving or caring mother either, more interested in her own social position, connections, whims, and comforts. She doesn’t have any ill-feeling towards either her daughter or her step-daughter, ensures that both of them have the same comforts (irrespective of their wishes in the matter), but is also a scheming woman, willing to do or say anything to advance her position through her daughters, and not above snooping and such to do what she has to. Her nature makes the atmosphere in the house uncomfortable, something Mr Gibson chooses to ignore because he wants to keep the peace in his house. Meanwhile Cynthia turns out to be someone Molly gets along with as far as the former lets her, but Molly (and the reader) know she has much to hide, never getting to know the real Cynthia. The two are friends but a study in contrasts as well, Molly, honest, straightforward, kind and caring, and Cynthia with plenty of secrets, nice enough, but superfluous in her feelings and relationships. As their stories play out, we also meet the other inhabitants of their village Hollingford, the ‘family’ (the Cumnors who live at the Towers) and to whose daughters Mrs Gibson was once governess, the much older family of the country squire Mr Hamley whose gentle wife takes a strong liking to Molly, their sons Osborne and Roger (of whom Mrs Gibson is very keen that Cynthia marry Osborne being the Hamley heir), the local gossips, and others.

Unlike Gaskell’s novel North and South (which was the one I last read) this one doesn’t deal with social issues but with more personal themes, relationships―those of parents and children, of siblings, of stepparents and stepchildren―and of people themselves, Mr Gibson for instance, taking this rather abrupt decision of marriage without really thinking of who he was marrying; Mr Hamley, with his traditional view of things; Roger Hamley who is a man of science whose work the Squire can’t quite understand, and Osborne Hamley the elder poetic son, who isn’t turning out the man his parents expected him to be, and has secrets of his own. And then this book also looks at theme of family and of upbringing, of the importance of the love one gets from one’s family, the kind of relationship one shares, which may lead to relationships where there is trust and communication, and those where this may not be the case, leading to much misunderstanding and some pain.

This is very different from North and South and also in some ways from Cranford, though if one were to class them, this one is closer to Cranford. While it deals with family, relationships, and individuals at a personal level, as people, it does get us to think about issues like tradition/modernity, class, social mores, the position of women, even. My reading of this book this time around was rather haphazard. Having started this book in serial with a group here a couple of months ago, things got in the way, and I fell behind, and then read what I had left in bits and pieces, a chunk at the beginning of this month, and the rest now, so my thought aren’t quite coherent (which probably reflects in my review). Still I found this to be a pleasant and interesting read for me. I enjoyed that she kept her characters human, no (pretty much) outright ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’. The contrasts between Molly and Cynthia in fact made me thing of the contrasts between Becky and Amelia in Vanity Fair which I am also reading just now, and where some of those same issues, nature, upbringing, class, and so on creep up. And as I already mentioned, the ‘incomplete’ indeed didn’t feel so much so. An enjoyable read overall.