Buses From Toronto To Frederiction

Cranford

I just finished the most famous novel by writer Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), which is none other than Cranford (1853), a story that chronicles the quiet life of a spinster in a small Victorian English town. It is interesting to note that this book was conceived in a somewhat unusual. The first two chapters were published in the autumn of 1851 in the Household Words , literary journal run by the great Dickens and, indeed, may be read independently. By the way, that they discussed two of the Dickens is precisely whether or not a good novelist. From these two deliveries Gaskell wrote the novel that ended two years later.

The small town of Cranford is a transcript of Knutsford, where the English writer grew up with his uncle after the death of his mother when she had just turned a year old. The novel is very close to his experiences as the narrator of the story, which could be herself, is a character we assume that is younger and counting anécdotas domésticas de unas señoras de edad. No es una historia romántica (o puede que sí, si tenemos en cuenta que salen a la luz algunas historias del pasado) y a pesar de que no suceden grandes cosas, se nos presenta un excelente cuadro de costumbres y se nos describe magníficamente bien la situación de la mujer en aquellos momentos en los que la sociedad comenzaba ya a desestructurarse. La protagonista principal es, sin duda, la bondadosa señorita Mathilda Jenkins, que ejemplifica muy bien la situación de aquellas mujeres solteras que vivían de sus rentas, con un estilo de vida modesto y ya entonces algo caduco. Gaskell hace gala de sus grandes dotes como narradora, así como de ese fino sentido del humor tan británico and how this is in the novels of its predecessor, the great Jane Austen.

After finishing the novel I've seen on YouTube there is a BBC series (I think Athena told us before) but I get the feeling that, as happens with the movie that was filmed on another Gaskell's novels, North and South probably has written a free interpretation based on the original story.