Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

I chose to read Wives and Daughters this month to complete the "classic about a family" prompt in the Back to the Classics Challenge. I was a little apprehensive about starting it, because I have a mixed track record with Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. I read her first novel, Mary Barton, in college, and while I don't remember many details from it at this point, I do remember enjoying it. More recently, however, I read her third novel, Ruth, and struggled to stay engaged in the story. As Wives and Daughters is over 650 pages long, I was really hoping for this mirror my college experience. It didn't take me too long after I started to realize that I was going to be okay--more than okay, actually. Simply put, I fell in love with this story.

Gaskell published Wives and Daughters in serial format from August of 1864 to January of 1866 in Cornhill Magazine. It's a family drama that follows several characters, centering mostly around Molly Gibson, a young woman living in a small English country town with her father. Molly's mother passed away when she was a young girl, leaving her father, the respected and competent town doctor, to raise Molly on his own. The pair are devoted to each other and have a wonderfully warm relationship. It's been just the two of them for a long time, but as Molly is quickly reaching an age where she will have suitors, Mr. Gibson decides to get married again in order to give Molly a stepmother that can help protect and guide her in this process.

He chooses to marry Mrs. Hyacinth Kirkpatrick, a former tutor that is well-regarded around their neighborhood. Hyacinth is widowed with a daughter of her own, Cynthia, who is about the same age as Molly. When Molly first hears of her father's decision to remarry, she is upset. She would prefer to keep things the way they are, but as she is a kind and dutiful daughter, she resolves to make the best of the situation and love her new stepmother and stepsister the best that she can. 

That proves difficult, however, as it doesn't take long for the new Mrs. Gibson to disrupt the calm, orderly flow of Molly's life. While not a terrible person, she is sensitive, dramatic, and attention-seeking. Her self-centered nature leads her to make several changes to the Gibson household which annoy Mr. Gibson and Molly. Her daughter Cynthia brings a whole other sort of change in the family. She is beautiful, friendly, and charismatic. She is also fickle, flirtatious, and curiously aloof in her feelings. Molly becomes close friends with her immediately, but struggles to understand her. It becomes clear that she is hiding some weighty secrets, but Molly is at a loss as to what those secrets might be. 

As the story goes on, the newly blended family learns to live together. The new Mrs. Gibson's concerns shift towards making advantageous marriages for Cynthia and, to a slightly lesser extent, Molly. A pair of brothers in the neighborhood, Osborne and Roger Hamley, become close with the Gibsons and are soon seen as potential matches for Cynthia. Osborne, as the eldest and more attractive son, is the more valuable catch, and his frequent visits to the household and attentions towards Cynthia seem to point to a budding romantic connection. However, Roger, the more academic-minded brother, is paying Cynthia quite a bit of attention too. Molly is too naive and innocent to fully understand her feelings towards the Hamley brothers, but she is powerfully drawn to Roger, and watching him gravitate towards Cynthia is painful to her in ways she can't fully comprehend. However, the Hamley brothers have secrets of their own, which complicate their attachments and intentions towards the girls. Sorting out these relationships and forging a path towards happiness forms the rest of the plot of the novel, with each member of the Gibson family learning how to best love and support each other despite their differing personalities and goals.

Wives and Daughters is not a flashy story. It is dramatic and filled with its fair share of twists and turns, but at its heart, it is a story about a very human family striving to get along, fix past mistakes, and figure out the best path forward. Gaskell's focus on character development is highly effective and among the best I've seen in older novels. Each of the characters in the story are fully realized with distinct personalities, goals, and problems. I related strongly to Molly. She was a kind character who only desired to help others and not not be a bother to anyone, which is how I (admittedly, optimistically) see myself. She consistently strove to hide her true feelings, smooth conflicts over, and not bother anyone, which aligns strongly with how I live my life. As such, it was easy for me to fall into her story and become deeply invested in her success. She was perhaps overly naive in many respects, but I found this to be endearing. She was quiet and demure, but not afraid to speak up for herself or others when the occasion called for it. Her efforts to help Cynthia, for example, were near heroic in how far they took her out of her comfort zone, and she didn't hesitate to step up for her. As a quiet girl myself, I genuinely liked Molly's character and I think a lot of introverted lovers of classic novels will feel the same. 

The other characters were similarly well-written, with Cynthia in particular standing out in her depth and nuance. She's a lot of things at once, both good and bad. She's kind and caring, but at the same time she's shallow and capricious. The reasons for her being complicated are clearly explained and make sense within the text. As the daughter of a well-meaning, but incredibly shallow and silly mother, she struggles to form authentic connections with others. She's afraid of being hurt, but desperately wants to be loved, which leads her to make some questionable decisions that help drive the plot. In her, Gaskell manages to create a character that is simultaneously sympathetic and annoying, and this dimension was highly engaging.

What was perhaps the most surprising aspect of Wives and Daughters for me was the excellent pacing. As I mentioned before, this novel is a long one. I've read several long classics over the years, and while I do enjoy them, they generally have boring stretches. Part of the classics experience is wading through over-long descriptions, dense sections of philosophical or religious musings, and detailed detours with uninteresting secondary characters. None of that happened here. The novel is 672 pages long, and everything flowed naturally and serviced the plot well. It was no problem for me to read around 100 pages a day and I didn't struggle with boredom at all. Information was revealed at a good pace and there were enough secrets to uncover to keep things interesting throughout the story. Of course, the book is from the 1860s, so it's still a fussy, polite, and proper read, but as those are the sort of classics I like, I was quite happy with my experience.

Indeed, the most disappointing thing about Wives and Daughters is that it is unfinished. Gaskell died suddenly in 1865 before completing the final section. Instead of a true last chapter, we get a note from Frederick Greenwood, editor of Cornhill Magazine, where the novel was being serialized. He writes about what the reader can safely assume the end of the story would have been and mourns Gaskell's loss. It's quite a touching tribute and probably the best way to end the story under the circumstances. It is truly just the very end of the novel that is incomplete, and it is obvious what was going to happen by that point, so readers will not be left with many (if any) questions, but I really wish I could have read Gaskell's own ending. 

So, despite my initial apprehension about Wives and Daughters, I ended up loving it. The length looked daunting, but the excellent character development and pacing made this a new favorite novel for me. I really can't say enough nice things about it. I can't believe how charming and emotional it was. It's nice to be surprised like this when picking up a classic! I am looking forward to reading more of Gaskell's novels in the future and seeing if I can discover any other new favorites among them. 

Challenge Tally
Back to the Classics 2020 (A Classic about a Family): 10/12
Classics Club (#56 on my list): 75/100 books completed

Total Books Read in 2020: 54