We cannot avoid, in conclusion, some reference to a distinction elaborated in an early chapter between the drudgery of “teaching” and the “sublime delights of education”: wherein the author quaintly remarks that a visiting governess can “do little more than stand between children and the faults of the people about them”; betraying herein the normal prejudice of the pedagogue against the parent.
Similar theories clearly inspire the eloquence—of a later chapter—upon a thorny subject on which the author achieved some pioneer work in her own life.
“‘Cannot you tell me,’ enquires the persecuted heroine, ‘of some way in which a woman may earn money?’
“‘A woman?’ is the stern reply. ‘What rate of woman? Do you mean yourself? That question is easily answered. A woman from the uneducated classes can get a subsistence by washing and cooking, by milking cows and going into service, and, in some parts of the kingdom, by working in a cotton mill, or burnishing plate, as you have no doubt seen for yourself at Birmingham. But, for an educated woman, a woman with the powers God gave her religiously improved, with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would make every species of responsibility safe,—for such a woman there is in all England no chance of subsistence but teaching—that sort of ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education of circumstances—and for which not one in a thousand is fit,—or by being a superior Miss Nares—the feminine gender of the tailor and hatter.’”
Mrs. Gaskell (1810-1865) must always be remembered as authoress of Cranford, which has startling similarities to the work of Jane Austen, and excels her in pathos. If Fanny Burney immortalised “sensibility,” and Jane Austen created “the lady,” Mrs. Gaskell may well be called “The Apologist of Gentility.” She taught us that it was possible to be genteel without being vulgar; and her “refined females,” if enslaved to elegance and propriety, are ladies in the best sense of the word.
“Although they know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other’s opinions.” They are “very independent of fashion; as they observe: ‘What does it signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us?’ and if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent: ‘What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?’” We may smile at their ingenious devices for concealing poverty, their grotesque small conventions, their horror at any allusions to death or other causes for genuine emotion, and their love of gossip; but our superiority stands rebuked before simple Miss Matty’s sense of honour “as a shareholder,” and before the “meeting of the Cranford ladies” for the generous contribution of their “mites in a secret and concealed manner.” As Miss Pole expresses it, “We are none of us what may be called rich, though we all possess a genteel competency, sufficient for tastes that are elegant and refined, and would not, if they could, be vulgarly ostentatious”; and they fully appreciated the true charity of “showing consideration for the feelings of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined female.”
Here, indeed, as in almost every thought or deed of their uneventful existence, our grandmothers can teach us that the eager interest in our neighbours, which we are accustomed to brand as vulgar and impertinent, was in actual fact a powerful incentive to Christian practices. There is a passage in Cranford which would baffle the most elaborate statistics of ordered philanthropy, as it must silence the protest of false pride, and remain an invulnerable argument against the isolation of modern life. “I had often occasion to notice,” observes the visitor, “the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities in Cranford: the rose-leaves that were gathered ere they fell, to make a pot-pourri for some one who had no garden; the little bundles of lavender-flowers sent to strew the drawers of some town-dweller, or to burn in the bedroom of some invalid. Things that many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to perform, were all attended to in Cranford.”
Nor were Miss Matilda Jenkyns and her friends deficient in any outward show of true breeding. Despite the most astonishing vagaries of taste in dress, language, and behaviour, they were dignified by instinct, and, on all occasions of moment, revealed a natural manner that is above reproach. Their simple-minded innocence and genuine humility never tempted them to pass over impertinence or tolerate vulgarity, and their powers of delicate reproof were unrivalled. We cannot admire the “green turban” of Miss Matty’s dream, or share her dread of the frogs in Paris not agreeing with Mr. Holbrook; we should have been ashamed, maybe, to assist her in “chasing the sunbeams” over her new carpet; and we may detect sour grapes in Miss Pole’s outcry against that “kind of attraction which she, for one, would be ashamed to have”; yet I fancy the best of us would covet admission to Cranford society, and be proud to number its leaders among our dearest friends.
In fact, the artistic achievement of Cranford is the creation of an atmosphere. Like the authors of Evelina and of Emma, Mrs. Gaskell is frankly feminine, and not superior to the smallest detail of parochial gossip; but while the ideals of refinement portrayed are more akin to Miss Burney’s (allowing for altered social conditions), her methods of portraiture more nearly resemble Miss Austen’s. She depends, even less, upon excitement, mystery, or crime, and Cranford, indeed, may be described as “a novel without a hero,” without a plot, and without a love-scene. Miss Brown’s death is the one event with which we are brought, as it were, face to face throughout the whole sixteen chapters. The realities of life, whether sad or joyful, are enacted behind the scenes and never used for dramatic effect, a reticence most striking in the incident of Captain Brown’s heroic death. They serve only to reveal the strong and true hearts of those whose dainty old-world mannerisms have already secured our sympathy.