This book examines apparently dichotomous aspects of Gaskells short stories: her failed fathers and her travel writing. The analysis links these themes by examining the ways in which Gaskell used a complex mix of unstable cultural ideas to demonstrate the fragility of home and family life and to challenge gendered norms.
The analysis of Gaskells fictional fathers is considered in the context of nineteenth-century debates about the role of fathers within the home. Fathers in Gaskells stories are presented as a disruptive force, breaking rather than creating a stable, secure family environment. Their behaviour becomes a motivator for travel as an escape from home. Travel also posed a transgressive challenge to the domestic environment and to gendered norms. Women travel writers were particularly vulnerable to accusations of exaggeration and falsehood. By incorporating themes of travel into her fiction, Gaskell was able to produce texts that are arguably richer than more straightforward travel accounts. In the texts discussed, Gaskell explores the ways in which travel, whether undertaken willingly or reluctantly, requires women to negotiate a physical, geographical and emotional space.
The short stories examined in this book illustrate Gaskells narrative hybridity and the ways in which her creative synthesis allows her to subtly challenge existing social and cultural hegemonies. Above all, the texts show her consistent resistance to patriarchal control and her commitment to a more equal and fluid society centred on home and the family.
Chapter 1: Introduction: Unstable Homes.
Chapter 2: Disrupted
Domesticity: Elizabeth Gaskells Failed Fathers.
Chapter 3: Travel as
Domestic Challenge: The Truth-Lie Dichotomy.
Chapter 4: Unstable Homes:
Conclusion.
Carolyn Lambert obtained her PhD from the University of Sussex, UK, in 2013. Her publications include The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskells Fiction (2013), Female Voices in Elizabeth Gaskells Mary Barton in British Womens Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, Adrienne E Gavin and Carolyn de la L Oulton, eds, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), For Better, For Worse: Marriage in Victorian Novels by Women co-edited with Marion Shaw (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Frances Trollope (2020) and Elizabeth Gaskells Smaller Stories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
