On Not Being Jane Austen

If I hadn't learned French first, I might have enjoyed learning German.

But, alas, after mastering (more or less) the glorious beauty of the French tongue, speaking German felt like gargling used motor oil.

I suspect the same might be true of my appreciation of Elizabeth Gaskell: if I hadn't read dear Jane first, I might have really liked Mrs. Gaskell.

I finally finished Wives and Daughters last week, which rather felt like I was doing my duty by Gaskell than anything else.  

Perhaps not--it was a story worth finishing, but I would have preferred that she had wrapped it up a hundred pages earlier.

(Everyone does, in fact: her death left the novel unfinished, by a mere one or two chapters.  An appended reflection by her editor and publisher was highly unsatisfying.)

I am being too tepid in my praise.  There are some real gems in here--scenes, observations, turns of phrase, characters.  Hers must have been a tremendous skill, to have created such characters, with such modest, quotidian virtues and vices, such realism in their very multi-facetedness.  

I mean, really--who can create such a character as Cynthia Kirkpatrick nowadays?  Her comment about being a "moral kangaroo" will be my epitaph, I'm quite sure.  What passes for a flawed hero or a "complex" character now is too easy: add rudeness or grumpiness or an inexplicable sense of having a "tortured" soul to an otherwise perfect character, and you're done. 

The plot, too, is delicate, realistic, modest.  Gaskell has too much innate charity to write a genuinely immoral person into her narrative.  The very meanness of her worst "villain" prevents her from having any worse effect than the domestic discomfort of those around her.  This is no small evil, in a tale of domestic proportions, but a Willoughby or a Wickham has more effect on the social body than does Mrs. Gibson.

But I never could quite overcome my annoyance at being spoon-fed throughout. No character has a thought, a motivation, a movement of the spirit that Gaskell does not report--in as charitable and gentle a manner as could ever be, but, nonetheless, with a thoroughness that began to grate long before the tale's denouement.  Austen could have conveyed as much, and more, with half the words.  There is a great artistry in saying things by leaving them unsaid, and it is not the sort of artistry that Gaskell displays.  I never got past the first chapter of Little Women, for that very reason.  

Gaskell's work is worth persevering through, however.  There is delicateness and subtlety here, in spite of the wordiness, and the moral sensibility, on full display throughout, never trips over into frank preachiness.

Incidentally, the BBC film version of this novel does a lovely job of bringing to life those complex characters.  Cynthia, Mr. Gibson, and especially Squire Hamley are beautiful creatures, and the production has far less of the odor of typecasting than the BBC Pride and Prejudice does.  I highly recommend it.