Much as I try to understand and accept Austen’s choice to have Fanny end up with Edmund in MP, I admit I’m struggling with his character after having read Wives and Daughters, because he pales so much in comparison to Roger Hamley. Roger is proof that you can see a girl non-romantically, be interested in someone else, and yet still treat your original friend with kindness and not forget about her. *glares at Edmund when he went into the avenue without Fanny*

So like, I don’t dislike Edmund, I never have, but I simply can’t love him like I love Roger, because the flaws I’ve tried to rationalize and forgive become much more apparent in comparison.

Roger Hamley is up there with Gilbert Blythe as a man who makes other men look bad just by being himself. Mrs Gaskell knew what she was doing!

ough

I love Roger so much

R.I.P. Barbara Leigh-Hunt. December, 14, 1935 - September, 16, 2024

Talk about the novel you're reading as if it's fanfiction

I'll go first:

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Length: 190k words

Completion Status: Abandoned, but dont let that stop you from reading this fic. Sadly, the author passed away before she could write the last chapter. She told her beta reader her plans for it and he wrote an ending, but everyone agrees it doesn't have the same flavor as the original. There was a fan film made a few years back and I love their ending, even if it is a bit OOC.

Main pairing: Molly Gibson/Roger Hamley (slow burn, friends to oh-crap-hes-in-love-with-my-sister to lovers)

(Note: the author claims she didn't write rpf, but Roger Hamley is suspiciously similar to Charles Darwin.)

Other pairings: Cynthia Kirkpatrick/Roger Hamley, Cynthia Kirkpatrick/Mr. Henderson, Cynthia Kirkpatrick/Robert Preston, Mr. Gibson/Hyacinth Kirkpatrick, Mr. Gibson/cheese, Hyacinth Kirkpatrick/Robert Preston (one-sided), Osborn Hamley/Aimee, Squire Hamley/Mrs. Hamley

Warnings: major character death, serious illnesses, mentions of 19th century medicine, underage (not the main pairing), mentions of grooming, see also: Robert Preston is his own warning (but the fic doesn't condone his actions), child neglect, financial abuse, 19th century purity culture

A few people have done podfics. My favorite version is read by Prunella Scales but it's behind a paywall (Audible). You can find free podfics on LibriVox.

There is also a fan film which I would highly recommend.

Mr. Gibson/Cheese LOL

Worth mentioning there's an earlier bbc miniseries from the 60s (I have seen it cataloged on Amazon, but I'm geolocked out) and there's two radio dramas, one from 83', and one from 2011.

Its a love triangle. He has to choose between Hyacinth and cheese, but what Hyacinth doesn't know is that he eats cheese whenever he leaves town.

always been obsessed w/ this exchange

Justine Waddell as Molly Gibson in ‘Wives and Daughters’ (1999). I can’t express how much I loved this portrayal. Loved the book, too: I think Molly Gibson may have usurped Dorothea Brooke (Middlemarch) as my favourite fictional heroine.

Justine Waddell as Molly Gibson in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters

molly gibson is not fanny price. i get the idea of it, i really do. i can see why one would think this, i think there is complete validity in saying that one reminds you of the other, because they are comparable. i like and relate to both characters, but for very different reasons. because they are very different people.

Wives and Daughters (1999)

Women.....

i don’t think i’ve felt satisfied with the ending of any wives and daughters adaptation and it bothers me because most of them are objectively fine. i don’t even know what a satisfactory ending would look oike

i hated it at first, but the 1999 (tv miniseries) ending is pretty good. it rounds things out pretty nicely and it’s heartwarming to see molly get to be happy. what irks me about it is that gaskell never would’ve written the ending this way; molly frolicking through a desert, while a satisfying ending to a modern audience, is unrealistic in the social confines of a victorian novel. it’s almost too good.

the 2011 (radio drama) ending is just bad, sorry. it’s too fast, too dramatic, and it makes very little sense because nothing before it was edited to account for the continuity changes. roger’s feelings change drastically in the blink of an eye, and he was practically in hysterics at the end of the scene, which is very jarring. the position of the ending also cuts a large portion of the novel’s denouement out, which loses a lot of really good character development and dialogue.

1983 (radio drama) doesn’t even try writing an ending and i respect that, i just expected that they would and was shocked when they didn’t. i wish they included more of the content of the note to the editor besides just “molly and roger get married, that’s all you need really”.

so 1999 has the best ending as a hopeless romantic who likes things tied in a pretty little bow, 1983 has the best ending as someone who enjoys accuracy, and 2011 makes me question the point of getting a literature degree, i guess? i think which one you like best depends on what you’re wanting out of a wives and daughters adaptation. i don’t think there’s a right or wrong favorite or least favorite to have. mine changes all the time.

okay yeah cranford. i liked it. i think most people do. it’s popular for a reason. and now i’m going to say something that’s maybe shocking? if i’m going to tell someone to read gaskell (which i do, a lot), i would recommend this over wives & daughters.

“but tumblr user extra-ordinary-wizard! you love wives & daughters! you write unnecessarily long gaskell posts because everyone you know irl got so fed up with you talking about wives & daughters that you have to bother internet people instead!” first off, you can just call me casey. that’s what i put it in my header for. but yeah. i love w&d! i want everyone around me to read w&d! it’s my favorite elizabeth gaskell novel! it might be my favorite novel, full stop! but it’s long and written in a style that requires time to get used to.

say what you want about cranford, but it is short, and it is palatable. 190 pages long compared to other gaskell novels is a cakewalk, and the vignette style of the chapters also help with the length. it’s a good book for reading in bits and pieces instead in larger chunks.

the style of writing is also more approachable for a casual reader. the common sentiment is to recommend wives and daughters to someone reading gaskell for the first time because the tone is gentler and more romantic (and closer to the common favorite jane austen) than more social-problem plot-heavy novels like north & south, and i think i could argue the same for cranford. it’s not a romance, it’s a satirical slice-of-life, but it felt very playful, and i could tell a lot of love went into writing it. it’s easier to digest than n&s, i would argue that it’s easier to understand than w&d, even, because there’s less exposition and overall small details to remember. the satire itself is easy to understand, even if i likely missed a lot of things due to not being a middle aged englishwoman in the 1850s. you could go from this to either w&d or something social-problem like n&s without too much whiplash, because cranford intersects the two styles while being it’s own unique third thing.

i genuinely enjoyed this book. i liked the characters, i understood the plot, i laughed, i cried, i yelled at miss matty for joining an mlm, i had a good time. and i think if i want someone else to have a good time, this is the book i would start them off with. it’s not my favorite gaskell novel (it’s either second or third, i don’t know how to feel about north & south right now), it’s not perfect, and it’s not what i think she should be solely known for (it’s good, but is it really so good that it’s the only gaskell novel i can ever find at a bookstore?), but it’s a good jumping-off point, and i can appreciate that.

In my experience the most common suggestion is to begin by North and South ("the 2004 miniseries is so dreamy and hot!!!") which is really... not a good place to start by.

Cranford IS a good suggestion as representative of her style, in both the light and the dark. And it's also my favorite (while thinking Wives and Daughters is better) for several reasons, between them, the focus on old ladies as people worth telling stories about, the way the narrative around Miss Matty evolves, and the sense that it is small, kind, unassuming people like her that make the world a better place.

I don't know what you mean about a mlm, though? Banks just were *like that* back then and it was all very risky.

I think Gaskell got known for Cranford for some... unfortunate reasons. It was safe, and costumbrist and perfectly "feminine", unlike her more social works like N&S or Mary Barton that got such heavy criticism. It's still kind of wild to me that Jane Eyre was back in that time considered "coarse" and "unfeminine".

On the other hand, BECAUSE it is short, it is a lower risk book to edit, and that's why it gets edited and printed more often than others. At least that's what German editors told @kajaono .

Nowadays what I suggest people as their entry to Gaskell is whatever hits closer to other things they have enjoyed before. She's a varied author, and there's usually a work of hers that can pick the interest of very different people, from something like The Doom of the Gryffiths to something like Six Weeks at Happenheim.

i watched “the making of wives and daughters” yesterday and it was adorable (objectively, “who the dickens is mrs gaskell?” is the better dvd bonus feature but “the making of wives and daughters” filled me with more joy), i loved the whole thing, but my absolute favorite part was the few minutes the cast and crew spent talking about molly as a character. it was great, so i’m going to talk about molly now.