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History of English Literature

Notes Heathcliff to her, but also in her use of symbols. It trickles in other forms throughout the novel in
expressions like the following coming from Catherine:
“Nelly, I am Heathcliff! If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be: and if all
else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not
seem a part of it.”
“There is no evidence”, says Samuel C. Chew, that “she was deeply read in the literature of
mysticism, but there is equally no doubt that she was a mystic.” This critic believes that at least
once, early in her youth, “Emily had attained the mystical experience in its entirety.”

Notes Charlotte Bronte in Shirley refers to Shirley’s (Emily’s) visions and trances.
In many of her poems, too, Emily tries to give expression to her mystical experience; for instance,
at one place she exclaims:
Speak, God of visions, plead for me,
And tell me why I have chosen thee.

19.2.3 Mrs. Gaskell
Mrs. Gaskell had nothing of this passion and frustration of the Bronte sisters. She was the wife of
a quiet Unitarian clergyman in Manchester-one of the buzzing centres of English industry. She was
mother of seven children, and she had, according to Walter Allen, “what may be called the serenity
of the fulfilled” and accepted everything with the air of, what David Cecil calls, “serene satisfaction.”
Her sense of humour and deep human sympathy are obvious manifestations of her serenity.
What distinguishes the novels of Mrs. Gaskell is her deep social consciousness combined with a
compassionate observation of the life around her. Her novels divide themselves into two well-
defined categories.
First, we have novels like Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855) which deal with the
social and industrial problems arising out of the masters-workmen struggles which were a feature
of the industrial age which had then just got under way. Being herself a resident of Manchester,
Mrs. Gaskell was a witness to the “blessing” ‘ of the Industrial Revolution. She pressed into service
her personal observation of the situation prevailing in “the hungry forties.” In Mary Barton the
heroine who gives her name to the title is daughter of a workman who led by the fervour of trade
unionism, murders Henry Carson, a fiery master, after his wife and son are dead from starvation.
The novel gives a realistic picture of the poverty of the working classes and their animus against
their masters whose cruelty is, however, considerably exaggerated by Mrs. Gaskell. North and
South is a realistic, thoughtful, and thought-provoking presentation of the conflict then raging
between the industrial North and the feudal, agricultural South.
Secondly, we have novels like Cranford, Ruth, Wives and Daughters, and Sylvia’s Lovers which
eschew all industrial problems and are concerned with rural life and manners which Mrs. Gaskell
knew so well, thanks to her long stay at Knutsford with her aunt, before she settled at Manchester
with her husband. Of all the novels of this category the best and the best known is Cranford which
is a disguised name for her own Knutsford. Cranford is a classic of its own kind. It portrays a world
inhabited by women alone. These women belong to middle-class families, and their main occupation
is gossip, tea-making, and tea-drinking. W. J. Long observes: “The sympathy, the keen observation,
and the gentle humour with which the small affairs of a country village are described make
Cranford one of the most delightful stories in the English language.” In Ruth Mrs. Gaskell
foreshadows the psychological novel of George Eliot. Wives and Daughters is a social comedy,
and contains the character of Cynthia Kirkpatrick— “one of the most striking young women in
English fiction.” Sylvia’s Lovers is a rather didactic story in a domestic setting.

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