Gothic Tales

The Old Nurse's Story, about a beautiful ghost child intent on luring a warm-blooded child into the freezing nights on the moors; The Squire's Story, about a gentleman with a nebulous past who moves into a grand house and marries a local belle only to reveal a sordid secret; The Poor Clare about an old woman who casts a spell which results in a lovely young woman being followed by her evil and seductive double; Lois the Witch, a terrifying and heartbreaking reprise of the Salem witch trials... out of nine stories in all, seven of them held me captive in this collection, which is quite an excellent average in any short story collection.

I've read some of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels and been highly impressed with her social commentary and show more vivid portrayals of class conflicts, but here we see an altogether different side of Gaskell's writing, which is the one she felt more free to show with an assumed name, under the cover of anonymity. No longer constricted by propriety, she was able to show a world operating beneath that thin veneer that Victorian morals dictated and through the looking glass: curses which held their sway over many generations, women with witchy powers, or who were assumed to be witches because of their barely hidden sexuality, men who wreaked true evil and cruelty and death by overreaching their powers in a paternalistic society, and yet, also and always, a woman's love and nurturing as her strongest defence against many of those evils. Two sides then to Elizabeth Gaskell. Two sides very much worth discovering. I predict there will be more E.G. in my reading future, and that I will return to some of my favourites in this story collection too. show less

As with every collection, some pieces are better than others. In this book, there are four stories and novellas that I loved, one I had mixed feelings about and four I disliked. However, the strength of the four outweighed the weakness of the others.

I was puzzled why the collection began with "Disappearances," which is more a series of vignettes than an actual story. It was based on real life disappearances that Gaskell had read about. A very weak beginning, but I see in the chronology that the pieces are printed in the order that they were published.

The next story is "The Old Nurses Story," which is a wonderfully typical Gothic ghost story set in a creepy old English house. It was followed by "The Squire's Story," which really isn't so show more Gothic but interesting all the same. I also loved "Lois the Witch," a story that was obviously inspired by the actual Salem witch trial documentation. My favourite of all, however, was the final story, "The Grey Woman." It started a little slowly, but soon took off and Gaskell maintained the tension for the remaining 50 pages.

I have the Penguin Classics edition (with the wonderful creepy Caspar David Friedrich cover), which includes a lengthy introduction. I found this intro helpful, as for one thing, I wouldn't have understood the story "Curious, if True" without it.

Yeah, so the other stories really didn't do it for me, but because I loved the four that I do, I'll have positive memories of this book.

As for Gaskell's writing, I suspect I'm definitely becoming a fan. I read and liked Cranford a couple of years ago and now know that I'll read more of her. Compared to other 19th century writers, she's not as excessively verbose, and I appreciate that.

Recommended for: readers who want to take a literary trip to 19th century England. show less

A wonderful collection of some of the creepier Gaskell short stories. My personal favorites are The Old Nurse's Story and The Grey Woman. Lois the Witch is also well worth reading. Beware, though...Gaskell likes to inflict the sins of the fathers upon their children. Not lighthearted by a long shot. Best in small doses on windy wintry evenings.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic Tales are an interesting mixture of supernatural and social horrors; witchcraft (both real and supposed), hauntings, a murderous husband and a villainous son to name a few; and all are shot through with an atmosphere that makes the gothic genre so very enthralling, and is almost a character unto itself.

I enjoyed (for a comparative definition of 'enjoyment') roughly 70% of the book; there was one story I simply could not get into, another - ‘Curious, if True’ - jarred oddly, not really appearing to belong in this collection, though under other circumstances I might have enjoyed it, and ‘Lois the Witch’, though one of the most readable tales, seemed to ride too heavily on the coattails of The show more Crucible, being in fact set amongst those very characters.

The darkness of these stories - Elizabeth Gaskell does not seem to feel the slightest need to be fair to her characters - takes some warming to, yet there is something refreshing about a strong dash of irredemption. I wanted to read these stories to see if I would care to pick up one of Mrs. Gaskell’s novels, and the answer is an optimistic, if reserved, affirmative. show less

The second story was good and set my expectations high; the rest of them were good, but just fell a little short of what I'd wished them to be. Gaskell's prose is full of dread and an eerie sense of foreboding, but it does tend to drag, and some of the stories seemed to collapse under their own weight.

Favorites: "The Old Nurse's Tale", "Lois th Witch", "The Grey Woman"

Elizabeth Gaskell's Gothic Tales is a collection of short stories and novellas strung together by a common theme of loss and darkness. I don't think Gaskell does horror/Gothic quite so well as she does the sunnier pastoral worlds of Hollingford and Cranford, but it's certainly an indication of her versatility that she can do both.

In "Disappearances," Gaskell writes about a string of unrelated disappearances, some based on actual stories, and explores the unexplicable. In "The Old Nurse's Story," ghosts of an evil past threaten to kill an innocent child. "The Squire's Story" is a tale of a murderer who lives a double life in a sleepy English town. In "The Poor Clare," Gaskell writes about a witch who calls down vengeance and then must show more spend the rest of her life atoning for the curse so it does not hurt one that she loves. "The Doom of the Griffiths" is the story of a family curse that foretells the death of the father at the hand of the son. In "Lois the Witch," Gaskell visits Salem, New England, at the height of its infamous witch trials. "The Crooked Branch" is the story of a young man who became a bandit and broke his parents' hearts. In "Curious, If True," Gaskell writes about a fey court full of elven characters of fairy tales. Finally, in "The Grey Woman," a young woman is horrified to learn of her husband's evil secrets and spends the rest of her life in hiding from his revenge.

These stories are definitely dark. Lois the Witch is hanged; the son in "The Crooked Branch" never repents, and the randomness of the tales in "Disappearances" makes the world seem a dangerous and illogical place. Good people suffer. There is no humor in these stories, and no happy endings. "The Grey Woman" was my favorite and probably best fits the adjective "Gothic." Most of the endings of the previous stories had been decidedly unhappy, but this one wasn't as dismal (it was dark, but at least the thing the main character was dreading her whole life didn't come to pass).

I'd recommend the book to Gaskell's fans, but don't expect it to be like her lighter works. I took a few breaks and read other books between chapters, just to relieve the Gothicness. show less

Virtue won't save you
handsome men can't be trusted
they shoot dogs for fun.