Victorians! discussion

For discussion of these chapters

isn't there some kind of schedule..?

The schedule was posted in the original thread. It is three chapters a day starting this Friday, June 24th.

ok... :) I thought it was 3 chapters a week, that's why I wondered :)

And I think we're on to these chapters today, right? These chapters include the great robbery scare, in which Miss Pole is terribly brave - another really funny episode - and then Brunoni's story (his wife's bit was pretty sad) and Lady Glenmire's engagement.

I also loved the robbers story. I honestly laughed out loud at the image of the lady rolling a ball under the bed.

The fear of robbers is so whidespraed in Italy nowadays that I thought we should read something like that more!!!!
And what about Lady Glenmire's engagement? I loved the way they all resented the "surrender" to a male
!!!

Well, I totally screwed everything up: I started yesterday's conversation in today's thread. Thank you all for calmly pretending nothing was wrong, as though I was Mrs. Jamieson falling asleep at a party.

In today's chapters, Miss Matty is completely ruined. I felt horrible. But the ladies pull together around her in a remarkable act of solidarity, community and selflessness, and manage to set her up semi-respectably anyway - despite her unconventional business acumen. And then the whole thing is rendered moot by her brother showing up with a moderate fortune under his belt.

And if anyone's still interested in debating whether or not Cranford is a feminist novel, now would be the time, yes?

My very brief take: I didn't think it was - just because a book is about women doesn't mean it's feminist - but my intro made a fairly compelling argument that I'm wrong, and generally I've sorta come out feeling that it's as feminist as you want it to be.

I don't think you have to put a label on an author to see how she stands on issues. Obviously, women suffer by the limitations put on them by society-both to be educated appropriately in financial matters (not necessarily all that different for every one today) & in their ability to get work when they need to.

Miss Matty rises to the stature of real if unlikely heroine.

I was, however, quite taken aback by the reference to her as an "elderly lady of 58". Here I'm been thinking of Miss Matty as my grandmother, God rest her soul. & not as a woman my own age.

I refuse to think of myself as an elderly woman!

People could live to be in the 80s, easily, even back then. That means a woman was "elderly" for 25 or 30 years!

I know that even in my mother's generation, a woman my age was much older in many ways than we are today with a lot more proscriptions on how to dress, how to act, how to wear one's hair.

And of course it's not so shocking to me to think of Miss Matty selling tea if she's a woman my age.

But still. I'm still catching my breath from that blow!

I've been thinking a lot about exactly what makes a novel "feminist" because in another group we're engaged in a reading challenge where one task is "Read a couple of feminist books"; unsurprisingly, that turned into a (very polite and interesting!) conversation. Cranford did come up.

You're not old, Ellie! As you say, the definition of "old" has been changing pretty rapidly.

Patricia Ingham points out in my intro that one of the major debates of the time was the roles of men and women in society; one argument was that since men are naturally better at managing business, and women naturally suited to manage homes, a society can only be healthy if both genders are represented. Seen in the context of that debate, Cranford seems feminist; Gaskell makes it clear from the very first sentence that she will be concerned with the idea of a society dominated by women.

That theme seemed particularly apparent in two episodes for me: first, where the community rallies to support Miss Matty, and second, in Matty's successful but unorthodox business practices. Both times, I felt like Gaskell was saying, "This might not have happened if men were running the show, but see how well it works?" Matty has a laissez-faire attitude toward money, but because she's kind and lives in a community where people want to support each other, it works out.

(Of course, if this is the message, Peter's appearance as sortof a deus ex machina to save Matty from having to run a business becomes a bit problematic.)

Great idea Anna! The Odd Woman sounds fascinating!

Ellie wrote: "But still. I'm still catching my breath from that blow! ..."

LOL! Don't worry about that!

I have Odd Women on my TBR would love to see it be a buddy read. Keep me posted.

Anna wrote: "There is an underlying implication for me that although this is a community of women, they would be better off if there were more men in the picture. Peter's return reinforces this idea."

Yeah, right. That makes sense. She's saying something about independent women, but she's not going terribly far with it.

And yeah, it's certainly understood that it's a tragedy Miss Matty and Mr Holbrook weren't able to marry.

But didn't you think Miss Matty's success at business was pointed? Or was it less that it was a "success" and more that she was able to muddle through despite not being terribly good at it (or into doing it at all)?

Odd Women sounds cool, but I have all of July set aside for Middlemarch, which I've been looking forward to for ages.

I guess we're united in being sortof confused about Gaskell's message regarding Matty's business skills. And it's possible she was confused herself, huh?

Good to know. Possibly it stems from this book's birth as a relatively unconnected series of essays.

Don't mean for feminism to entirely take over the discussion; anyone have any grand thoughts, related to feminism or not? Do y'all think it has a plot? I think it sortof barely does - Miss Matty turns out to be the protagonist, and her several changes in fortune are her arc - but it'll certainly never be accused of being plot-driven. And did you like it?

Christyb wrote: "I also loved the robbers story. I honestly laughed out loud at the image of the lady rolling a ball under the bed."

I also loved how they all searched the house. When I come home at night to an empty house I do the same! My house makes a lot of noises and I want to save myself the trouble of getting scared every time my floors crack which can sound like someone is walking.

I like rolling the balled up socks under the bed, reminds me of when I was a little girl.

I wish there were more information about the narrator. We finally get her name but is there any other information about her that I missed? Is she young? middle-aged?

And thanks everyone for all your support re the age issue!

Great idea The Odd Women; it's ages that I want to read it!!!
I agree with Ellie: even if in the end we meet her father and know her name, she almsot non existant as a character. she looks more like an omniscent exterlan narrator than someone inside the book.
To go back to the feminst issue, I still think, for all that hasbeen aready said, that this can be considered as at least a protofeminist novels. On the "light side" of the problem, if you get what i mean. It is not as harsh as The House of Mirth shold be - I'm about to start it now that I've finished Cranford, but it looks things constantly from a femal point of view, not covering the silly points, but still considering it "better" than the masculine.
The Cranford ladies were not burnng their bras, but who knows about their granddaughters?

Yeah, odd choice with the narrator. Good point Laura, that she often seems like the omniscient third-person narrator - but then suddenly she'll do something, take an active part in the story, and it's...distracting. Honestly, it threw us all off: I just don't think it was a good choice by Gaskell.

But Anna, Matty was conducting business on her own - she had a perfectly (mildly) successful tea business, things seemed fine in a fairly feminist way, and then Peter showed up and there's this big old "WHEW! That was okay, but it's so much better now that a dude's showed up and we don't have to bother anymore!"

Anyone know if there's an autobiographical element to that particular episode? We've been worrying ourselves sick about whether it's feminist or not, but maybe it's just what actually happened. As a story element it seems weird, but as real life it's totally believable.

In my Introduction to Cranford John Chapple writes, "This community solidarity extends to Drumble, when Mary Smith enlists her father's help. He is so decisive and businesslike that he baffles them; nevertheless, he is another caring male in the line of Captain Brown, Mr Hoggins and Peter Jenkyns. Cranford, Jenny Uglow rightly argues, is not 'a separatist Utopia, but an appeal against separate spheres'."

I have been thinking over the feminism issue and haven't reached any conclusion, but I like Chapple's and Uglow's POV's. So maybe Gaskell is not saying that things would be better if women were in charge, but that things would be better if men AND women ran things together. A mild form of feminism, perhaps

On a different note, I liked how the women of Cranford secretly got together to help Miss Matty, and Martha refused to leave her. There are some loyal, kind and helpfull hearts in Cranford:)

Sure, yeah. I caught that inference too, although I can't back it up either.

And Nina, that's a good point, that maybe Gaskell is rooting for shared power, rather than a society of Amazons.

And I liked how the women came together to bail Matty out too. Again, that felt like Gaskell saying, "Here's the kind of thing that would happen if women had more say in things." ...At least, that's how it feels if you're specifically thinking about feminism when you read it. It could also perfectly well be read as nothing more than "These old ladies are nice."

I think this conversation has strengthened my idea that Cranford is as feminist as one wants it to be.

Alex I think your comment is spot on. Great .

And by the way, I hope this doesn't stop the conversation cold, but as an aside: this has been a terrific group read. I often don't have high hopes for informal readalongs, but this one has inspired more great discussion than many of the official group reads I've taken part in. Props to y'all, and to Gaskell.

I've been buying my wife the Penguin clothbound series with covers by Coralie Bickford-Smith, which is weighted heavily toward Victorian lit, and this is the one book I'd never even heard of. Now I have!

That sounds like a beautiful series. *sigh*

I agree with you about the feminism although I think the women are classically catty, often narrow-minded, and frequently unintentionally funny.

As well as smart, compassionate, and able to create an entire world with the scraps left to them.

What would the world be like if they ran it? Stricter, perhaps, but far more compassionate.