Review: SISTER CARRIE - Theodore Dreiser

 

• Original Publication Date: 1900
• Genre: American, classic, Victorian
• Topics: Domestic, gender roles, industry, realism

 

Review by : Liz Inskip-Paulk (www.ravingreader.wordpress.com)

Called “the greatest of all American urban novels”, Dreiser’s Sister Carrie was a good read and I really enjoyed it. It’s not a “happy” read or a “feel good” read, but the narrative arc is strong and the writing was fine. (Dreiser has been criticized by some as having writing that is not sophisticated enough, but I thought this was fine. After having read some drivel lately, Dreiser was a pleasure to read. This was very character-driven as a story, and this was perfect for what was happening throughout the book.)

Sister Carrie is basically the story of Carrie Meeber, a young girl raised in a small rural town who moves to Chicago to chase big-city dreams. You’d think that as it was written during Victorian times, that it might be a heavy-handed morality tale, but it’s not. People do iffy things, but there is no come-uppance for them or even redemption for them to change their “evil” ways. Life continues just fine and in fact, Carrie (she who didn’t fit the Victorian moral code of the time) even thrives despite her unconventional choices in life. (Probably made some of the audience get vapors!)

It is this immorality, if you’d like to call it that, which really irked people when this novel was published. Dreiser has been called one of the first American writers of the Naturalist/Realist school which shocked the socks off of the turn-of-the-century American readers and publishers when it came out.

 

 

His storyline was one of the first published U.S. novels that described a woman being supported by a man to whom she wasn’t married (and was living with), and then when she leaves that partner, she hooks up with another man who’s already married and starts to be supported by him – all with little consequence. When the second partner (who’s already married) commits an impulsive crime, they both end up on the run and yet, when they land up in New York for a new life, there is little punishment for Carrie’s actions. (And you know how the Victorians loved their characters to have punishment for poor choices/rewarded for good ones idea, especially for the weaker sex.)

Trying to get Sister Carrie published at first was tough. A wife of a potential publisher read the draft and called it “too sordid” for them to work with, and only 450 or so copies were sold when it was later published. Years after the book was published, Sinclair Lewis said that the novel “came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first air since Mark Twain and Whitman” (1930 speech.)

And it was a change on many levels and quite shocking to readers. Nothing bad happens to the woman for her life choices, AND she doesn’t learn to change her ways (no redemption) AND she works in the shockingly free world of theater. She’s not that happy, but she’s not punished. Goodness me.

 

This sounds like a bit of a depressing novel, and it’s not a happy story by any means, but it is a good read. I loved how Dreiser portrayed Carrie without stereotyping her with a Cruella Deville personality. She’s young, ambitious with little useful work training – what other options were there, really, apart from working to death in a poorly paid factory job? Who wouldn’t want to improve their situation if they were in that and didn’t have that many choices open to them? I, for one, am not going to judge her for that.

However, a lot of the audience did judge her for that. His two male characters received a different reception: Drouet (first fake husband that Carrie lived with) and Hurstwood (second already married lover) don’t seem to suffer much at first when they invite Carrie into their lives, but in the long term, the latter certainly does.

His downfall from successful businessman to homeless vagrant is a useful foil for Dreiser to compare Carrie’s rising theatrical success (slightly clumsy but works ok), so perhaps the audience was ok with this man receiving punishment for his immoral ways. Drouet, the first partner, just peels off gradually with no negative consequences. Interesting how the different genders are portrayed – Carrie probably made the female readers very nervous when they read about her…

So – overall, a good read, and as most of it was on-line, it wasn’t too scary length-wise. I think on-line is the way to read scarily long books from now on.) I’ll definitely be reading Dreiser’s other classic (An American Tragedy – pub 1925) at some point.

Download Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

 

 

 

 

Review: LADY SUSAN, by Jane Austen

Original Publication Date: 1871
  Genre: Romance, epistolary
  Topics: family, interference, society














  Review by : Patty @ A Tale of Three cities

One of the earlier works by Jane Austen, Lady Susan is a novel that really changed my opinion of its author.  While I would regard Austen as a romantic writer in general (I am more into the misery of the Brontës' style of writing), I found Lady Susan really showcases Austen's sarcastic and sometimes mean description of the noble class. It is a treat for anyone enjoying the witty world of the "comme il faut" society and all the true work that goes on behind the scenes...

Lady Susan is written in an epistolary form, which meant that I read it in no time, including my giggling between the letters.  We deal with Lady Susan Vernon, a 4-month widow, in search of a new husband for herself and her daughter.  In her second youth (i.e. in her mid-thirties), she can still take the world by a storm with the help of her looks, her wit and her manners.

This is age where the only means of communication is through letters - every little idea, wish and comment is written down in great detail for the reader to discover (how they were not afraid that someone would discover them and create mayhem, I wonder...)

Lady Susan writes to her brother-in-law to inform him that she intends to visit them after depositing her daughter to a boarding school:

"My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement"

Aahhh... it does sound cheeky, doesn't it?  And yes, shortly afterwards we are informed of the real reason for this visit, in a letter to her best friend:

"I have avoided all general flirtation whatever; I have distinguished no creature besides, of all the numbers resorting hither, except Sir James Martin, on whom I bestowed a little notice...Mrs. Mainwaring (is) insupportably jealous .. and so enraged against me...It is time for me to be gone; I have therefore determined on leaving them"

Well, a little scandal never hurt any well-to-do family.  As long as one disappeared for a bit, all was well in the world and peace could be restored...

I was impressed with Austen's ability to change between the official façade and the real background of each story; no sympathy for any character, no vain effort to conceal or improve the situation at hand.  What is even more impressive is the ruthlessness she bestows upon Lady Susan as regards her daughter:  Lady Susan thinks of her as "the greatest simpleton on earth" and she will need to go to boarding school "till she becomes a little more reasonable" -- i.e. until she agrees to marry the man dear Maman has in store...

Lady Susan has all the negative qualities one can even imagine - yet, I could not come to dislike her.  If anything, Austen presents her in such a light that I was actually amazed she could pull so many tricks and come out (mostly) unharmed.  I came to admire her for her survival skills and her determination to conquer the world.  She justifies every action she takes and she seems to really believe in her own true and kind character:

"this want for cordiality is not very surprising, and yet it shows an illiberal and vindictive spirit to resent a project which influenced me six years ago, and which never succeeded at last"

Why she wonders at her sister-in-law's mistrust towards her?  why, because Lady Susan moved Heaven and Earth so that Mrs. Vernon would not marry her husband's brother...such a tiny little thing, how could one bear a grudge after all these years???

But then, the opportunity arises:  Lady Susan meets Reginald, Mrs. Vernon's brother, and makes it her mission to conquer him, "to humble the pride of these self-important De Courcys" - so Lady Susan can hold a grudge herself...

The story goes on to portray a series of exchanges of letters (I suspect at the speed of our emails even...), where in the end Austen has to intervene. She turns into prose to provide the last details of this story, before we lose any interest in the truth behind the letters. (highlight to read)  Mrs. Vernon manages to get rid of her sister-in-law, Lady Susan's daughter escapes from her mother and lives happily ever after with the Vernons, and Lady Susan herself escapes the worst, only to come back triumphant marrying someone much younger than her (stealing him, of course, from a woman half her age!)

I thoroughly enjoyed Lady Susan, not only because of its theme (I suppose it's like watching a modern-day soap-opera - you know it's trash, but you love the back-stabbing!).  More importantly, it brought to light Austen's skill to point to her society's faults without mercy.  I assume this may have been the reason she chose to publish it so much later...

 Download Lady Susan by Jane Austen at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

Review: The Third Miss Symons

Original Publication Date:  1913


Genre:  Moral Tales

Topics:  Single Women, The Importance of Good Cheer, Family, Societal Norms











Review:  This is one of those books that seems to have been written to serve as a Dire Warning against certain types of behavior.  F. M. Mayor writes about Henrietta Symons, an awkward girl who grows into a hard-edged young woman who in turn becomes a querulous middle-aged woman who becomes an isolated old woman.  Henrietta has had a bad temper her whole life, and this clearly has disastrous implications on her whole life.

If this had been the whole point of the story, it would have been depressing enough to read, but it probably wouldn't have made it into the line of Virago Modern Classics.  But Mayor used Henrietta to comment on many aspects of Victorian life, particularly about the lives of women.  Henrietta grew up in a very comfortable home where she never had to worry about money.  Thus, she went to school and had no real hobbies, studied without learning much of anything, and then... not much else.  She never married, but she was never in need of a job.  She had a lot of time, but she had no interests.  She could manage a household if she needed to, but no one needed her to do so.  She could visit friends, but she had none.  Henrietta's life devolved into one of isolation and emptiness, mostly because she wasn't good at anything and had no ambition to try to be better.

Early in the story, Mayor points out that most Victorian women in their late teens and early 20s  graduated from school and then spent a few years doing nothing but worrying about clothes and attending parties (I find it hard to believe that all Victorian women were that vapid, but let's ignore that for now).  And then they got married and settled into their lives as wives, mothers and homemakers and things progressed according to their natural order.  But that didn't happen for Henrietta, and so when the party invites stopped coming and it became clear she wasn't going to marry, there was nowhere for her to go.  There was no contingency plan.  There were just years of emptiness before her, and she had to find ways to fill them.

In some ways this book was refreshing because Henrietta didn't seem like she really wanted to be married for much of it, she just wasn't sure what other options were available to her.  And her family didn't tell her that she was useless or unnatural for not having a husband and children.  But all of that was implied, really - Henrietta was unmarried because she was unlikeable.  If she had been just a little bit nicer, she would have been married and life would have been much better for her.  Never mind the fact that her married sisters all had sorrows and troubles of their own - they were obviously much better off.

This was a tough read, obviously.  Lots of subtle commentary about the state of the world and a woman's role in society.  Luckily, the narrator for this one was excellent and the story is very short, so I didn't have any trouble finishing it.  Think I will steer clear of the heavy-handed Victorians for a little while, though!

Basil by Wilkie Collins

Original Publication Date: 1852

Genre: Mystery

Topics: Secret marriages, classism, secrets, Victorian fears.













Review:

So… in our hands is the confession of Basil who is out on the west coast of England hiding from someone out to get him. It's all very hush, hush with fake names and the whole sha-bang. Basil starts his narrative telling us about his family, specifically his father who is super vain and proud of his lineage. Basil has an older brother, Ralph,  and a sister, Clara, too. More about them later.

One day Basil is on an ominbus and hot pretty girl walks in and sits down. He gets stalkerish, follows her home and skulks around her garden. He does a little sleuthing and finds out that the girl, Margaret Sherwin, is a wealthy linen draper's daughter. A linen draper’s daughter! The Horror! And also, he must have her! Immediately he tells the girl he's going to marry her despite her station. Here's the problem:

1. He's known her for 5 minutes.
2. His father is going to freak out.

Basil suggests that he marry Margaret in secret, so he has time to break the news to his father. Margaret's dad isn't too pleased with this but agrees as long as Basil doesn't 'claim' her as his wife (wink, wink) for a year, at which time she'll be 18! This has bad idea written all over it but Basil is so smitten he doesn't care.

Basil spends his evenings with Margaret and her mother as chaperon. Margaret doesn't have much personality but he attributes this to her youth and her station. He figures he can mold her into the woman he wants her to be, so it's all good. Enter Mr Mannion, Mr Sherwin's clerk. He's an enigma. He has no past, no friends or family. No one knows anything about him but he has a strange power over everyone in the house. The year is almost up and Basil still hasn't told his father of his marriage but he's optimistic. Then a scandalous event occurs and Basil is on the run. Then more secrets! and plot twists! right until the end.

The first half of Basil took me awhile to get into. The characters are one dimensional and the foreshadowing is rather obvious. At the beginning, Basil has a dream of a fair woman who makes him feel happy and a darker woman who scares him. The fair woman is clearly his sister and the darker one, Margaret. Clara is meek and gentle, blond and kind. In other words a perfect woman. I found this annoying. Basil himself annoyed me- he's such a schmuck and I didn't think anyone would marry a girl he just met without massive amounts of alcohol being involved. I don't think I'm the first one to feel that way. Collins is quite defensive in his Dedication. He insists such things happen in real life.

Basil touches on the Victorian fears of the classes intermarrying. The whole world will go hell in a hand basket if that happens! And when Basil marries Margaret, well, there you go. It's perfectly fine for his brother Ralph to have a middle class mistress though, as long as precious Clara isn't sullied by her presence.

Basil is quite the melodrama. People swoon, break out into cold sweats, and fall into nervous fevers at the drop of a hat. The bad guy is seriously bad and there is sort of a chase scene. Brother Ralph steals every scene he's in. He adds a little levity to the story. Despite all the negatives, the second half is fast paced and quite entertaining.

I suspect that Basil isn't Wilkie Collins best, but it's still pretty good.

Review: The Woman in White

Original Publication Date:  1859

Genre:  Mystery, Romance, Sensation

Topics:  Inheritance, Dark Secrets

Review:  I listened to this book via the Librivox recording, and it was amazing.  I don't know how so many people worked together to make this book come to life, but I love that they put so much effort into it.  Each character has a different narrator on the audiobook, and each narrator creates a completely unique voice that really brings that character to life.


I don't even know how to describe what this book is about.  There's a drawing teacher, Walter Hartwright, who meets a woman dressed all in white one night on the road.  He helps her get where she needs to go and then continues on his own way.  But he soon realizes that his life is tied by fate to that of the woman in white, who knows about all sorts of secrets and wicked deeds and horrible pasts that will impact the lives of those closest to him.  And it's up to Walter and his completely awesome sidekick Marian, a brave and loyal woman who has the misfortune of being quite ugly, to save the day so that Walter can live happily ever after with the beautiful, rich princess of his choosing, Marian's half-sister, Laura.


Honestly, in reading this book, I can't help but think that Collins really wanted to make Marian the heroine but somehow settled for Laura.  It's pretty clear that Collins has zero interest in Laura.  She's good, she's kind, she's pretty, she can play the piano, but that's about it.  Collins gives practically everyone in the story at least one chapter to tell their side of the story, but he gives Laura nothing.  In contrast, Marian the Awesome gets a significant portion of the story dedicated to her narrative.  I will go to my grave (or at least, will go to the point at which I become quite foggy about this book's particulars) thinking that Hartwright was in love with one sister in his heart but just didn't realize it because he was so blinded by physical beauty.  But lucky for him, he gets to spend his days with both sisters, so life is quite grand for him.


My only other exposure to Collins had been the book Armadale, and I admit that I wasn't a fan of that one at all.  I really disliked Lydia Gwilt and she was the narrator for the majority of the book.  Here, I got to see Collins' skill with POV - he is excellent at making each character unique - and was also quite wrapped up in a complicated story with many twists and turns.

This is one of those books that, for me, was so helped by the audiobook.  I feel like it would have taken me forever to pick up a book that was almost 700 pages of Victorian overreaction and fainting and virtuous women, but in audio form, it was completely doable.  The Librivox team behind this edition is really, really good.  If you enjoy sensation novels or mystery novels or novels about unconventional heroines, then I highly recommend this one to you.  It's good stuff!

I listened to this free recording of the book.

Emily Fox-Seton, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Original Publication Date:  1901

Genre:  Romance, Historical Fiction

Topics:  Women, Race

Review:  UGH.  This book disgusted me on so many levels.  I couldn't even get through it because I was so heavily offended by the blatant racism present here.  This is actually an omnibus of two books- The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst.  The Making of a Marchioness is the better of the two books (better = less offensive), but it's an odd one.  The heroine is described many times as being not very clever, overly naive, and somewhat ridiculous in her enjoyment of doing good turns for other people.  Emily Fox-Seton is far too saint-like for my tastes, and Burnett is none too subtle when describing her.  A few quotes:

"She did not know she was humble-minded and of an angelic contentedness of spirit."  Of course she didn't.  Because when you are ANGELIC, you must be completely blind to the fact.

"In fact, she did not find herself interested in contemplation of her own qualities, but in contemplation of those of other people."  Yes, because if one is a truly good person, she must never once think of herself positively.

I think you get the idea.  The book is liberally littered with phrases and comments like these, in which Emily Fox-Seton is described as being angelic.  But that is not enough.  She is also, of course, absolutely beautiful, even though she is thirty-four years old.  And even though she is poor, she has exquisite manners and dresses so well that no one would ever know that she had no money.

Already, Emily of the last name-dash-other last name was getting on my nerves.  But I persevered through to her happy ending, in which she married, as you can imagine, a very rich and kind (though also not very clever, as Burnett unceasingly points out to us) marquis.  I hope I didn't give too much away there, but quite frankly, the title gives it all away.  Don't be jealous of Emily, though, because the marquis, too, is not particularly clever.  He is described as being not that handsome, not that tall, not that aristocratic, and not very memorable.  He's really just rich and polite.  What made him supremely unattractive to me was the ridiculous habit he had of wearing a monocle that magnified his eye.  In fact, he wore the monocle while he proposed to Emily.  Which makes it impossible to take the man seriously, marquis or not.

So.  The first book was overly saccharine and monocle-infested, but somewhat bearable, if only because it made so starkly clear how difficult life for a single woman could be in the early 20th century.  Emily really did live in daily fear of The Future.  How would she provide for herself in old age?  Who could she depend on?  There was so much she couldn't control, but she always tried to present a cheerful demeanor to others.  I also like that this book was not a romance, exactly.  Emily is grateful to the rich people in her life for being generous towards her, but she holds no illusions about her own life.  She clearly is grateful to the Marquis for saving her from a life of scrimping and saving, but theirs isn't a marriage of passion or extreme feeling- they marry each other for comfort, and Emily feels more gratitude than anything else and seems to view her lover as more a benefactor that she wants to please than anything else.

I am confused by the message that Burnett was trying to share here.  Was she saying that very beautiful, poor (white) women who let everyone else walk all over them and are grateful for it are likely to win the attention of a really rich man in the end?  Because I am not on board with that message.  I think she was trying to convey a theme of "The meek shall inherit the earth," but I think she made Emily a little too perfect and idealized to get that across in a manner that seems realistic to her readers.  Still, I was glad that Emily ended the book content.

BUT THE SECOND BOOK.  My God!  Perhaps I was more sensitive to the racism because I am Indian, and the racism was against Indian people.  But no, I think I would be offended on anyone's behalf because it was just so ignorant and horrible.

First, Burnett refers to Hinduism as an "occult" religion.  All Hindus know spells and apparently use those spells to kill other people.  (Using a more direct method is too obvious for us, I guess.)  This was extremely disturbing for me to read, for obvious reasons.  But I was also upset because it reflects a complete disregard for the culture.  Burnett fell completely into stereotype (and I am not sure which stereotype, or perhaps stereotypes against Indians have changed drastically over the past century).  She didn't give the religion or culture any respect in this novel that features two Hindus as fairly prominent characters- these characters are also, as far as I got (which, admittedly, was not far), pretty horrible and shady, vindictive women.  One is proven to be horrible because, of course, she rejects the offer of a Bible and sticks to her "occult" ways.

The point at which I stopped reading?  When I got to the part in which Emily Fox-Seton's loyal and kind and good (and white) maid tries to warn her kind and forgiving and beautiful (and white) mistress that not everyone has good intentions towards her:  "Ameerah," wailed poor Jane, "White ones have no chance against black!"

Yup.  That's where I stopped.

The Leavenworth Case, by Anna Katharine Green

Original Publication Date:  1878

Genre:  Mystery, Romance?

Topics:  Murder, Fainting, Family Drama

Review:  The Victorians were nothing if not really, really dramatic.  Anna Katharine Green was no exception and her mystery novel, The Leavenworth Case, proves it.  There is Fainting.  There is Swearing Before God.  There are Secret Marriages.  Wild Accusations.  Love at First Sight.  And, of course, 11th Hour Revelations.  A Full Confession.  All those things and many more, and all deserving of mid-sentence capitalization.  And all shared with much more wordiness than necessary.

I must admit that the more I read Victorian literature that was popular with the Victorians, the more I judge them (Yes.  All of them).  They seem, on the whole, a very bizarre bunch prone to monologues and lectures and excessive use of italics and exclamation points.  I find it hard to believe there were many sensible people around in the time period, especially as they all seem to conveniently put their every dastardly thought into writing to be found by someone later on at a key moment.

The Leavenworth Case was not my cup of tea.  It centers around a locked-room murder of a very wealthy man whose name, unsurprisingly, was Leavenworth.  Mr. Leavenworth had two nieces, one of whom would inherit all his money and the other of whom wasn't going to get anything.  There was no real reason for this at all- both nieces were very pretty and seemed very attached to their uncle, but he bizarrely only wanted to give his money to one of them.  What follows is a very complicated (might I say convoluted?) mystery involving many people and a whole lot of partially-burnt pieces of paper (really, you'd think one would be more careful) of trying to determine who killed him.

There were multiple narrative voices in this story:  we have the actual narrator who tells the story, but we also have other characters take on the role of narrator to relate their stories and involvement with the crime.  The thing is, I couldn't tell the difference between any of these narrative voices.  They all sounded the same to me, from dialect to sentence construction to anything else that lends distinction, even though people came from different walks of life and even different countries.  So with that caveat, I was even more lost with the other characters.  It took me a very long time to differentiate between Mr. Leavenworth's nieces, for example.

I also thought the story could do with some editing, but then I often feel that most Victorian novels could do with some editing.  I really dislike the last-minute confession from the villain who then proceeds to tell us his version of the story, explaining every single puzzling detail of the story- it is just sloppily done, in my view, and also seems a bit lazy.  There must be a less bludgeoning way to share the information than that, to integrate it more into the story.  There was also a longer-than-necessary explanation of Mr. Leavenworth's very random hatred of Englishmen.  I don't think this odd characteristic added much at all to the story, and could easily have been tweaked to be taken out without any harm done and at least a few pages removed.  The multiple conversations about and mullings over the exact same clues could have been reduced, too.

I am saying all the bad things, but I do see how this book was engaging to its readers.  The mystery is very complicated and seems to go in many different directions.  Just when you think you've gotten to the end, some other twist comes up.  The detective in the story, Mr. Ebenezer Gryce (was Ebenezer just a really popular name in the Victorian era?!  I don't get it), was also a funny and endearing guy- the only character, really, who stood out to me as an individual.  While I don't think I'll be reading any more of Green's novels, this one was a lesson in patience, and if you are one of those who truly does enjoy Victorian sensibilities and dramatics, then maybe you should give one a go.

Cross-Posted from BookLust

Review: RUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell

Original Publication Date: 1853

Genre: women's fiction

Topics: "fallen woman", single mothers, illegitimacy, Victorian society, religion

Let the good times begin!

I have the honor of posting the first review of PGP, so to get us of to a good start, I'll start with a book by one of my favorite authors - Elizabeth Gaskell. She wrote Ruth after her first novel, Mary Barton, at the same time as Cranford and just before North & South. You'll be happy to know all her works are available on Project Gutenberg.

Review:

When she was 12, Ruth Hilton became an orphan and was forced to leave the comfortable farm she had always lived in to become an apprentice seamstress. Her mistress ran a respectable establishment, but it was more like a sweatshop for young women than a home. At 16 Ruth was chosen to go to a ball, but had to stay in the background, to assist any ladies with wardrobe malfunctions. There, her angelic beauty caught the eye of Bellingham, the proverbial Victorian Rake.

Bellingham knows his game: he approaches Ruth carefully, with offers of friendship and kindness, and with time gains her trust. When they are both caught in an innocent-but-seemingly-compromising circumstance, Ruth throws herself at the mercy of Bellingham, who quickly whisks her off to Wales (that infamous country!), where The Deed Is Done.

Her rascal lover eventually abandons her, and Ruth, on the verge of suicide, is taken in by a kind middle-aged minister. Mr. Benson lives with his sister (named Faith) and an outspoken maid, and it’s at their home that Ruth gives birth to her son and takes on the roll of a respectable young widow. And that’s as far as I’ll go with the plot.

Ruth is clearly a novel with an agenda. Gaskell bravely tackled single motherhood and illegitimacy in 1853, when Victorian sensibilities were at full swing. It took guts, the kind of guts that it’s hard for a modern reader to really appreciate.

Gaskell made it a "prohibited book" in her own house and some of her friends burnt their copies and expressed "deep regret" for her decision to publish it. There are, of course, no explicit scenes of any kind in Ruth, and we only realize the scale of the sin by the reaction of other people. Ruth herself only grasps how wrong she really was years later - she’s innocent, you see?

I was very young; I did not know how such a life was against God's pure and holy will - at least not as I know it now.

Because Gaskell had a social goal, she needed to control her plot so that Victorians would never think of Ruth as a “fallen woman”. Ruth, seen from every possible angle, had to be squeaky-clean, or readers might turn against her, and undermine the purpose of the novel. Gaskell made sure that we could never wonder “could she have done it differently?”, so Ruth’s story is piled with as many extenuating circumstances as possible.

The result is that Ruth could never be seen as a Mary Magdalene, but becomes the perfect Madonna - a Mother, a Healer, a True Christian, a Saint. Of all the too-good Victorian heroines I’ve read about, Ruth is the “goodest”. This does not improve the quality of the novel, but it was an effective tool for social change, and for that alone Ruth is worth reading.

Without its social context, Ruth could be a frustrating book because it's simply too heavy-handed on the moral punch line. The depth of Ruth’s identity is secondary to Gaskell’s agenda, but considering Victorians' stigma against single mothers and children born out of wedlock, you realize that Ruth needed that type of heroine to have the desired effect. Only with the perfect woman would Gaskell be able to pass on the Dissenter message of reform (Mr. Benson is a Dissenter minister) she so strongly believed in.

Would Victorian readers been able to feel for Ruth if she had been less beautiful, poor, alone, young, innocent, honest, motherly, hard-working or kind? Could they have forgiven Ruth's decision to trust Bellingham, if her own mistress hadn't "caught" her with him and told her never to come back? What if Ruth had shown an inkling of sexual desire, flirtatiousness or simple silliness? Wouldn't they have frowned at her new home, if Mr. Benson hadn't been quite that old and a hunchback, living with his sister and a strict maid, hence removing every possibility of romance between them?

By tightly controlling her story, Gaskell got her readers to question: was Ruth guilty and thereof redeemable or was she innocent and therefore not to be blamed?

What surprised me about Ruth were the secondary characters, who felt much more fleshed out than the heroine. The maid Sally (who might easily find a second job in a Dickens novel) takes the role of comic relief, but is also the voice of the stricter Church of England followers. Ruth’s friend Jemima also felt real and much more approachable, with her rebellion, tantrums and pride.

The male characters were also interesting, especially Bellingham, who stays true to himself to the very end. He doesn’t come out as evil, but as a thoughtless brat, spoiled by his mother, whom Gaskell mostly blames. Actually, throughout the book I couldn’t help but think she’s much harder on women than men.

SPOILERS

At first I felt a bit cheated by Ruth being killed off. It seemed Gaskell just didn’t have the guts to let Ruth break the tradition of fallen literary women who must, in the end, pay for it. But upon reflection: what else could Gaskell have done? Ruth’s secret was out and the entire village knew about her past. Even though they proclaimed her as a saint after she risked her life for them during the cholera epidemic, would they be as forgiving once her good deeds were forgotten?

I see now it would also never do to have Ruth fall in love again, marry and have more children.

The book focuses on Ruth's dark path to redemption, but at no point is Bellingham made accountable, questioned or suffers any type of consequence. That frustrated me as well, even more than Ruth's death. But I must also acknowledge that, while Ruth's story-line falls within the Victorian norm, a Rake who doesn't repent it actually fresh. As Elizabeth Lee says in her "Victorian Theories of Sex and Sexuality",

Women had to be held accountable, while the men, slaves to their catabolic purposes and sexual appetites, could not really be blamed. (...) Once led astray, she was the fallen woman, and nothing could reconcile that till she died.

You know, I wish that the part about accountability wasn't still a bit true today...

END SPOILERS

As I said at the beginning, it can be a frustrating novel for a modern reader. Gaskell might have made great progress in the cause for single mothers, but it’s hard to identify with or befriend someone like Ruth - poor Ruth, her personality sacrificed in the altar of social change!

But once you see what Gaskell had in mind and how she went about pulling it off, it becomes a fascinating read. The secondary characters also bring the book alive, as well as Gaskell's usual delightful descriptions of domestic life. Perfect for bookclub - and free for download at Project Gutenberg.