Synopses & Reviews
ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810–1865) was born Elizabeth Stevenson in London, the daughter of a Unitarian minister who resigned his position on conscientious grounds. Her mother died a year after her birth, and Gaskell spent her formative years in the care of relatives in northern England. In 1832, she married William Gaskell, a well-known Unitarian minister, and joined him to work among the poor for social reform. They had four daughters, as well as a son who died in infancy. His death left Gaskell so distraught that she began writing for distraction. Her first major success was the novel Mary Barton (1848)—published, as were her first several works of short fiction, under the pseudonym Cotton Mather Mills. For many years, she also wrote regularly for Charles Dickens’s magazine, Household Words, contributing stories and a serialized novel, Cranford. Meanwhile, the Gaskells’ home in Manchester became a popular stop for writers and reformers, including Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Ruskin, and Charlotte Brontë, who became a close friend. After Brontë’s death, her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography. The Life of Charlotte Brontë proved a pioneering and controversial psychological study of Brontë’s family life, and remains perhaps the most important book on the writer. Gaskell died of a heart attack in 1865. A memorial to her lies at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Synopsis
A departure from the stories Elizabeth Gaskell wrote for Charles Dickens's
Household Words magazine
, The Poor Clare is a dark, gothic novella of thwarted love and a family curse that vividly illustrates the social tensions of Victorian England.
The purposeful slaying of lonely Bridget's beloved dog unleashes a torrent of rage that surges down through the generations. In her desire for revenge, Bridget utters a fearsome curse upon the dog's killer: All that the murderer loves most, he will lose.
This haunting story of "the sins of the father being visited upon the children" brilliantly shows off Gaskell's pioneering understanding of the tensions between Catholics and Protestants, and the harsh realities of class society. The Poor Clare stands as an innovative and exciting gem in Elizabeth Gaskell's oeuvre.
Synopsis
Rage and revenge mix with witchcraft and religion in a high Gothic tale of irredeemable loveOne of the most important writers of the Victorian era, especially notable as an era when it was difficult for female writers to be heard, Elizabeth Gaskell is best known as the author of the acclaimed social novels Cranford, Mary Barton, and North and South.
But Gaskell also wrote in other genres. The Poor Clare is one of her Gothic tales, the story of Bridget Fitzgerald, who unwittingly puts a curse on her own estranged daughter and the granddaughter she did not know existed. When she discovers that the curse has fallen on her own kin, Bridget submits herself to the rituals of an obscure religious sect, hoping to lift the curse.
The Poor Clare sensitively treats issues of class and Catholic and Protestant religious tension in Victorian England, and is an innovative and thrilling gem from Gaskell's wide-ranging oeuvre.
About the Author
ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810-1865) was one of the first writers to treat class and labor relations in her fiction--often having characters speak in their local dialects, which was frowned upon at the time. Charles Dickens was a great fan of her work; he asked her for a story for the first issue of his journal, Household Words, and would go on to publish many other stories and novellas by her. Gaskell was also close to the Brontës and wrote a biography of Charlotte Brontë that did much to establish that writer's literary reputation. Gaskell's Cranford was one of the most popular novels of the Victorian era, and was recently adapted by the BBC, with Judi Dench in the starring role.