Cranford

Beautifully observed and gently funny, Cranford is less a novel than it is a series of vignettes, drawn from the lives of a small group of genteelly impoverished older women in a small town in mid-nineteenth century England. Gaskell is quite gentle with her characters, I think perhaps because she was aware of how limited a life she was creating for them—with all the social restrictions placed on unmarried women, with just enough social status to be unable to work to support themselves, but with not enough income to keep themselves independent—and so while they have to face trials, Miss Matty and Co. have the strength and the resilience to face them.

A simple feel-good classic. The first two or three chapters are rough for being episodic, until Gaskell decided she was writing a novel after all and then it becomes more sewn together. Her humour also improves immensely with this change, and she gets a better handle on her narrator's point of view. I went from feeling disappointed to laughing over Mrs. Forrester's completely inappropriate story about her lace collar. There is the usual collection of romances, marriages, deaths and scandals that you anticipate from small-town 19th century England, but the drama never rises to even an Austen level of stress. I felt many times like I was returned to Lucy Maud Montgomery's Avonlea, featuring just its senior women. The narrator is a bit of show more an enigma at first but that's all cleared up by the end. This weighs as nothing compared to Gaskell's North and South. I enjoyed it anyway after the initial hurdle. show less

It has been awhile since I have read a book that has given me nothing but sheer delight. This is what Cranford did for me. It runs a gamut of emotions - funny, sad, exciting - without any sense of syrupy melodrama and was a joy to read from beginning to end.
Cranford is a small English village comprised mostly of women. This story concerns some older spinsters and widows - a pair of sisters (Misses Deborah and Mattie Jenkyns) and some of their friends (Miss Pole, Mrs. Barker, Mrs. Jamieson, and Mrs. Forrester) - who try very hard to hold onto their sense of gentility and their way of life in a world that is rapidly changing before their eyes. The narrator remains nameless through most of the book, but it is clear it is a younger female, show more one who lives in a nearby village and has close ties to the Cranford women. The men in Cranford (Captain Brown, Mr. Holbrook, Peter, Signor Brunoni, and Mr. Hoggins) are, for the most part, transient characters. They come in and out of Cranford and rarely stay for long. The narrator makes this clear at the very beginning:
"In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women. If a married couple comes to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week ...In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there?" (pg. 1)
Cranford was originally published in a serial format in Charles Dickens' Household Words. It is a series of vignettes told by the narrator to the reader in an intimate tone. That tone, while often gossipy in nature, is without malice or meanness. It is much more like catching up on news with an old friend. Most importantly, though, the vignettes portray women adapting to circumstances and change beyond their control with strength and ingenuity. show less

Everyday events among the upper class of a small village in England in the 1850s. There are almost no upper class men or children in the village for a variety of reasons - military service, lack of jobs, etc. - so the elderly, single, upper class women are in charge (not that there’s anything to be in charge of besides the social calendar). The narrator, a young woman, lives in the city but travels to Cranford periodically to socialize with her old family friends, which gives the book an episodic structure. Miss Deborah Jenkyns, her younger sister Matty, and Matty’s friend Miss Pole scrimp and save to maintain the lifestyle to which they are accustomed (living off their inheritance in a big house with servants) and navigate the show more complex and slowly decaying social rules.

This Victorian-era novel is *very* funny and charming. The little vignettes are sweet and soothing and the book is all anecdotes and minimal plot. However, my read did suffer from comparison to short stories I was reading just before about poor people at the turn of the century. The people of Cranford have no real problems. The worst thing they can possibly think of is having to sell some furniture or *shudder* getting a job. There are a lot of levels to this book, and the author is obviously aware of the absurdity, but it was hard to lose myself. show less

Though the subject of the novel is a group of quaint, elderly ladies bent on manners and morality, the wit is sharp, the storytelling endearing, and the humor raucously funny. In fact, the humor took me completely by surprise. From the clueless old woman who take advice given in jest literally and dresses up her cow in grey flannel, to the maid forbidden to take followers who insists she never takes on more than one at a time, every page presents one hilarious comment and eccentricity after another. But the novel doesn't cross the line and mocks its own characters; it balances well sweet, endearing moments with the laughter.

The town of Cranford is "ruled" by spinster sisters Deborah and Matty Jenkins, Miss Pole, and widows Mrs. Jamieson show more and Mrs. Forrester. The women live in genteel poverty, valuing their social positions above monetary wealth. Wearing an outdated dress is no matter, but heaven help a woman who marries below her station!

The book moves along in chronological order without a major plot. Instead, we are given 16 chapters of Cranford life: their highs, their lows, their triumphs,and their faults. We are left with a charming portraiture of village life and of characters we would not mind knowing better.

An absolute must-read. I knew before I finished the first chapter that this book would be a favorite. show less

The introduction to my copy of Cranford says that Elizabeth Gaskell "did not intend [the book] as a novel—she had hoped to create a series of sketches to help Americans understand English country life." The first two chapters certainly read that way. But after brief introductions to "Our Society" and "The Captain," Gaskell launches into a full-blown narrative about Matilda Jenkyns—Matty to her friends— a middle-aged old maid living in the small town of Cranford.

Told by Matty's good friend and intermittent housemate, Mary Small, Cranford relates the interactions of Matty and her mostly spinster friends, Miss Pole, Mrs. Fitz-Adams, Mrs. Forrester and Mrs. Jamieson. These ladies consider themselves the elite of Cranford society, yet show more spend the better part of the novel showing their small-town provincialism. Spatting over a visiting Lady becoming engaged to the lowly town surgeon (the second straight book I've read from this era where doctors were held in low esteem). Frightening themselves and each other with rumors of marauding ruffians (who may be nothing more than passing strangers). Enjoying the magic act of a visiting Turkish conjuror (but only after they see the Rector in the audience, obviously conveying the church's approval of the evening's entertainment).

Cranford is a witty exploration of the way virtuous women can simultaneously be petty and pretentious, wrapped inside a satisfying tale of heartbreak, familial and financial loss, and—ultimately—the redemptive power of simple decency. show less

As Doctor Tom Recchio would be quick to point out, this isn't a novel so much as a series of vignettes. That doesn't stop it from being highly enjoyable, however. The old maids of Cranford, with their dedication to Victorian social etiquette above all else, are frequently hysterical, often charming, and occasionally moving. My favorite bits were those involving one of two men in book, Captain Brown, and the visiting ladyship. Since the book doesn't really have a plot, it can't be said to have a climax as such, but Gaskell does pull everything together in the end and caps things off with a satisfactorily big event.

I have to complain about my edition, though, a Penguin Non-Classics one released to tie into the BBC miniseries starring show more Dame Judi Dench: it's the Penguin Classics edition of Cranford, but with the introduction, textual notes, and appendices lopped off. The explanatory notes are still there, though, and make frequent references (i.e., "See Appendix III 'Fashion at Cranford'") to the portions of the critical apparatus that are no longer in the book! The explanatory notes also seem to think that I'm an idiot at times, telling me that someone saying she'll soon be seeing her late sister indicates she thinks she's going to die soon. D'you think?

added June 2012:
I first read Cranford over three years ago now, and in the intervening time, I've seen about half of the TV show and thought about a lot of the novel (Dr. Thomas Recchio, author of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford: A Publishing History, is my dissertation advisor). When I went into it, having since read North and South (twice), Mary Barton (twice), and Wives and Daughters, I was expecting/remembering a light piece of fluff that wouldn't be as good as those more serious novels.

I see that in my original review, I commented on the novel's made-up-as-it-went-along nature (indeed, it wasn't supposed to be a novel at all when it started), but it was much more striking this time through. The first two chapters form a self-contained story about the coming of Captain Brown to the town of Cranford, where "all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women" (5). He runs afoul of the genteel women, especially the Jenkyns sisters, Miss Deborah and Miss Matty. Captain Brown dies, then one of his daughters, making for a depressing tale of female community in the face of hardship. At the end of the second chapter, we learn in passing that Miss Deborah too has died by the writing of the story.

Then, the third and fourth chapters form another self-contained story of their own, about Miss Matty and a long ago love she let slip through her fingers coming back, but still not happening. And then it ends with him dying, too, giving us four character deaths in the first four chapters, and two stories that aren't altogether cheerful.

In the midst of all this, sadness, though, are of lot of humorous details about how the ladies of Cranford live, and it must have been this that readers wanted more of, because chapters 5-10 have much more of this. Not that there's no sadness, because there's definitely some, but the emphasis flips. It makes for an odd structure: had Gaskell planned it as a novel from the beginning, I would imagine we'd start with the fluffy stuff about what to call people with titles and possible foreigners and the panic over the alleged robberies, and after we'd gained some connection to the characters, it would be time for the heavy emotional stuff. As it is, it feels very odd.

I think that it's around chapter 11 where Gaskell decided she was writing a novel, because that's where we get out first clues about the potential return of the Jenkyns's brother, Peter. More than that, though, we get what is surely one of the saddest and most moving passages in literature, where Miss Matty recounts how she and her sister used to plan for their futures, and Miss Matty always wanted to have children, and now they don't even express interest in her, and she dreams sometimes that she has one! How depressing is that!

From there to the end (chapter 16), we get an abbreviated novel about the financial crisis that threatens to ruin Miss Matty's life and how everyone comes together to deal with it; just as the part where she tells of her lost dreams is so depressing, the parts where the community bands together to help her are so triumphant, feel-good in a way that is actually earned by the text. There's a lot of emotional power in Miss Matty helping out the man with the bad bank certificates, and in her creation of a tea shop, and in the events of the last two chapters. (I'll try to hold something back, spoiler-wise.)

"We all love Miss Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us." From its quick, depressing beginning, to its humorous middle, to its quite touching ending, this "accidental novel" turns out to be better than I remembered and expected, and I'm now sorry I consigned it to a second tier of Gaskell's works. show less